THE
PIONEER
TRAIL
LAM BOURNE
BANCROFT LIBRARY
THE PIONEER TRAIL.
THE
PIONEER TRAIL
BY
ALFRED LAMBOURNE
THE DESERET NEWS
Salt Lake City
1913
~533
Copyright, 1913,
By ALFRED LAMBOURNE
rolt Library
Dedicated to the Memory of
MY FATHER.
PREFACE.
"An Old Sketch-Book" and "The Old Jour-
ney," the predecessors of "The Pioneer Trail,"
are now out of print, and the volume here offered
to the public in their stead is to fill a demand for
the original works. In the present book there
is much additional matter to the letterpress of
the first editions and, indeed, the character of
the work is somewhat changed, the work being
more an epitome of human emotion rather than
one descriptive of scenery. These statements,
however, have rather too important a sound as
applied to such a short narrative as makes up
these pages. Since the issue of "The Old Jour-
ney," the sketches from which it was illustrated
have been scattered here and there, and the
vignettes from the original plates are given in
their place. An explanation seems necessary to
8 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
those who may purchase the book in its new
form in anticipation of its being a duplicate of the
former works.
I lie at the side of a mountain road. The moun-
tain is steep, the road is edged with trees. There
are the wild-cherry, evergreens, and clumps of
ancient shrub-oak. The road is now unused ; few
pass over it, save it be the shepherds who take
their flocks from the high pastures of one moun-
tain range to those of another. What once had
been ruts made by the wheels of wagons are now
changed by rain and flood into deep-cut gullies.
It is a place where, in the spring time, the air is
fragrant from millions of snow-white blossoms,
and where now on the branches of the cherry,
hang clusters of crimson fruit. The piece of
road is historic. At this, its steepest part, near
"The Summit," and where it is crossed by ledges
of stone and littered with boulders and shale
that once tore the iron from the cattle's feet, I
found an ox-shoe. The relic had lain here long.
Down this road passed the Pioneers.
There is stillness around. Over "The Little
THE PIONEER TRAIL. ,9
Mountain" arches a cloudless sky, the wide land-
scape is bathed in sunlight. But this place, now
so quiet and deserted, may yet become the scene
of animation. The broken road is to be a high-
way, preserved as a piece of "The Pioneer
Trail."
THE AUTHOR.
FROM PREFACE TO PIONEER JUBILEE
EDITION.
Some years ago the author of this book was
enabled to gratify an ambition to record in
artistic form something of the scenes and some-
thing of the incidents of the memorable pilgrim-
age,The Westward March, from the once bor-
ders of civilization to the Great American Des-
ert "An Old Sketch Book," Boston. S. E.
Cassino, 1892. His purpose was not to publish
a guide-book to the plains and mountains, for
which there has been no occasion within the
present generation, but rather a summary, a
poetic-prose narrative of a typical journey, as
seen through the memory and devoid of com-
monplaces, the more salient features only loom-
ing through the past.
When the Jubilee Celebration of the strange
12 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
journey for it is that, and those who made it
that we are this year honoring and commem-
orating was decided upon, it was suggested in
consideration of the singular fitness of "An Old
Sketch-Book" as a souvenir to be presented dur-
ing the Jubilee to the Pioneers yet living, that
letters were addressed to the Pioneer Jubilee
Celebration Commission that speak for them-
selves. Many of the names appended to the let-
ters were recognized as belonging to the honored
band of Pioneer men and women, while the
others were of those who think that in this Ju-
bilee Year those who crossed the plains and
mountains in ox-teams would appreciate the
receiving, and their descendants the giving of
a work of this character.
"An Old Sketch-Book," however, was a large
and costly volume of a limited edition, and
hardly manageable for the present purpose. The
author therefore decided to place the sketches
and descriptive matter in the form now used,
under the title of "The Old Journey." The
prompting to undertake the work was not merely
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 13
encouraging but was made almost a duty by the
commendations of the original volume, and had
there been no other result from his labors, the
author would have felt fully repaid for them by
the expressions of approbation from the press
as well as from those who saw the birth of the
State and who watched its growth to the present
hour.
The author is one of those who "crossed the
plains." As the years have gone and time has
not only cast a sort of glamor over the event,
but has given also to men an opportunity to re-
flect seriously and in calmness and intelligence,
that same Journey assumes greatness in our eyes,
both in its inception and in its achievement. It
finds a prominent place in the History of the
West, and will ever stand forth among events.
Indeed the world had heretofore seen nothing
like it, and in the very nature of things its rep-
etition is improbable, if not impossible. It must
now be read; it cannot be experienced.
In presenting this edition there are no excuses
to offer. The author has been true to nature and
14 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
to history, and the publishers have done their
part in a manner that must excite wonder and
commendation when one thinks of what has
been achieved in the wilderness, the advance that
has been made in the art of the printer within
the few years that have elapsed since the
sketches appearing in the book were made.
It hardly needs intuition to foretell success for
this little volume.
BYRON GROO.
May, 1897.
"Far in the West there lies a desert land, where
the mountains
Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and
luminous summits.
Where the gorge, like a gate way,
Opens a passage wide to the wheels of the emi-
grant's wagon."
PLATES.
The Start from Missouri River.
Nebraska Landscape with Prairie Fire.
Morning at Chimney Rock.
Camp at Scott's Bluffs.
Laramie Peak from the Black Hills.
Ford of the Green River.
First Glimpse of the Valley.
CAPTAIN JOHN D. HOLLADAY.
THE PIONEER TRAIL.
HIS day, within the hour, I took from
its place of concealment "An Old
Sketch-Book." It lies before me
now, I turn its leaves and live once more a past
experience. Well, well! How vividly this book
brings to me again those stirring days! Why,
these are days gone by this quarter, yes, nearer
this half century! How unexpectedly we some-
times come upon the past turn it up, as it were,
from the mold of time as with the plow one
might bring to light from out the earth some lost
and forgotten thing. This book, with its buck-
skin covers, revivifies dead hours, makes me live
again those times when life for me was new ; or,
if not exactly that, brings them back in memory
20 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
as reminders of times and conditions now passed
away forever.
The book is a reminder, old, battered, dusty,
yet truthful, of what an ox-team journey across
the western plains and over the Rockies was in
the years that are gone.
The book so long neglected, now so full of in-
terest, received hard usage in those former days.
Before it lay at rest so long, gathering dust and
cobwebs about it, like a true pioneer it was made
to rough it in this world. It learned to with-
stand the brunt of many a hard encounter. Mas-
ter and book were companions on a long and toil-
some journey.
Inside and out; yes, the leaves and the covers
all tell tales. This buckskin was drenched many
a time by the thunder-storms of Nebraska and
Wyoming; by the sleet and snow that fell upon
the mountains. Between these sheets of vari-
ously- toned gray paper, close to the binding, are
little waves of red, gritty stuff, contributions, on
some windy day, from the sand hills of the Platte
Valley, or the Big Sandy Creek (the poetic Glis-
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 21
tening Gravel Water of the Indians), or from
"The Three Crossings" of the Sweetwater, or the
wearisome piece of road leading from Platte to
Platte North and South over the ridge and
down into Ash Hollow. One end of the book
has been submerged in water, a reminiscence, no
doubt, of the fording of either the Platte, the
Sweetwater, the Big or Little Laramie or the
Green River farther on. O, there are many emo-
tions revived within me by a sight of the book;
they crowd upon me thick and fast ! These crisp,
gray leaves of sage, where did they get between
the leaves? It was, I believe, on one cool Sep-
tember night, at Quaking Asp Hollow. I re-
member that then great bonfires were blazing
around our camp, and the red tongues of flames
showed by their light, wild groups of dancers
the ox-punchers performing strange antics; a
fantastic dancing supposed to be under the pa-
tronage of Terpsichore; or, at least, some more
western muse; a something, as I recall it now,
between that of our modern ball-room and the
Apache Ghost-Dance.
22 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
Remarkable that those sketches can suggest
to me so much! Yet it is that which is unseen
that fills me with amaze. Turning over the leaves
it all comes back. "The Journey" is no longer a
dream ; it becomes again a reality ; I go over the
long, long plodding, the slow progress of seem-
ingly endless days. Not only do I look upon the
scenes which were transferred to the book, but,
through sympathy, on others also that, for want
of time, were left unsketched. Incidents of many
kinds thrust their memories upon me. Some-
times the experiences recalled were pleasurable;
sometimes they were sad. But mirthful or
tragic, pathetic or terrible, I go over them again,
and the twelve hundred miles, nay, the fifteen
hundred, considering the circuitous route that we
were compelled to follow, pass before me like a
moving panorama. Prairies, hills, streams,
mountains, canons, follow each other in quick
succession all the ever-changing prospect be-
tween the banks of the Missouri River and the
Inland Sea.
How rapidly we have grown ! What was once
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 23
but dreams of the future first changed to reality,
and then sank away until now they are but
dreams of the past. No more the long train of
dust-covered wagons, drawn by the slow and
patient oxen, winds across the level plains or
passes through the deep defile. No more the
Pony Express or the lumbering stage-coach bring
the quickest-word or forms the fastest transport
between the inter-mountain region and "The
States." How hard it is to understand the brief-
ness of time that has passed since this great in-
terior country was practically a howling wilder-
ness, inhabited by bands of savage Indians and
penetrated only by intrepid trappers or hunters !
As we are now whirled along over the Laramie
Plains, the Humboldt Desert, or through the
Echo or Weber Canons, reclining on luxuriously
cushioned seats, and but a few hours away from
the Atlantic or Pacific seaboards, we can scarcely
realize it. Surely the locomotive plays a won-
drous part in the destiny of modern nations.
Without its aid the country through which we
are about to pass might have become as was sur-
24 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
mised by Irving, the cradle of a race inimical to
the higher civilization to the East and West.
Now we behold it a land giving promise of future
greatness, where peace, wealth and happiness
shall go hand in hand, and where already it is
well-nigh impossible for the youth of today to
fully comprehend the struggles and privations of
its pioneer fathers.
The sketches, the greater number, are roughly
made. There was little time to loiter by the
wayside. Some of them are hardly more than
hasty outlines, filled in, perhaps, when the camp-
ing-ground was reached. Some show an impres-
sion dashed off of a morning or evening, or,
sometimes, of a noonday. Once in a while there
is a subject more carefully finished, telling of an-
early camp or of a half-day's rest. Some are in
white and black merely, others in color.
What a new delight it was to one young and
city-bred, to mingle in the freedom of camp life
such as we enjoyed near that spot. How sweet
it was to pass the days and nights under the blue
canopy of heaven! Three weeks we remained
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 25
there; three weeks elapsed ere our train was
ready to start. There was nothing very beauti-
ful, it may be, in the scenery bordering upon
"The Mad Waters," but it was wild and sylvan
at the time, and we were excited by the prospect
of those months of travel that lay before us.
Between the high bank on which our wagons
stood and the main course where the Missouri's
waters flowed, was "The Slough." There, under
the high branches of primeval trees, the river
back-waters lay clear and still; there the wild
grape vine ran riot ; there hung the green clusters
of berries that would swell as we journeyed on,
and that would be ripe ere we reached our jour-
ney's end. There the young, and the old, too,
resorted for their bath. Many the fair girl who
made her toilet there, often, indeed, that some
bright face was reflected in a silent pool, a na-
ture's mirror, while its owner arranged anew her
disheveled hair. The daughters of dusky sav-
ages, of painted chiefs the Tappas, the Pawnee
or the Omaha had, no doubt, used that place for
the same purpose in other years. Little thought
26 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
they of the white-faced maidens from distant
lands beyond the great seas, perhaps of which
they never heard, who should some day usurp
their place.
During our days of waiting ere we had started
westward, often, indeed, our eyes were turned
toward the sunset horizon. From there would
come the train of wagons in which the greater
number of emigrants would make "the journey."
Often there was a false alarm. Each waiting
emigrant, impatient of delay, would take some
far-off cloud of dust to be that made by the ex-
pected wagons. But often it was only bands of
frontiersmen, Indians, or perhaps a band of an-
telope. Would the train never come? How
long this wait ! At length, well I remember the
morning, the word was passed! It was the
wagons for the emigrants. The half-cooked
breakfast and the campfires were left deserted.
Each and every one went forward to see the
wagons that for so many weeks would be their
homes. Some there were who had lover or rela-
tive who had preceded them the years before and
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 27
now their lover or relative returned for those
whom they loved. All dust-covered and torn
were the teamsters' clothes. Some were bare-
headed. Yes, they had raced on the road. Two
captains, our own, John D. Holladay, and another
equally eager, had made a wager. Each one
was positive that he would reach the banks of the
Missouri first. In order to gain the wager our
captain had aroused his men at the hour of mid-
night, and in the darkness had forded the deep
Elkhorn River, and continued the journey east-
ward while the members of the other company
were enjoying their needed rest.
A daring deed! But those pioneers of the
west knew no fear. They were in earnest, too.
Captain and teamsters alike shared both the joy
and the pride in the winning of the wager.
Then on the afternoon of the same day the
other train arrived. O what a shouting and yell-
ing then rent the air. Yet the rival captain and
his teamsters took their defeat good naturedly.
They had started eastward better equipped than
was our captain, and yet the latter had won the
28 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
race. Of this achievement of course we were
proud.
A supper and a ball were given by the losing
company. And what a ball-room the Wyo-
ming Hotel. It was a long, low house of logs
and the dance-room was lighted by a row of
tallow candles, and the music was furnished by
the teamsters from the west, and yet what a time
of enjoyment it was! What a contrast between
the refined young girls from across the seas, and
those roughly clad men from the west. Yet in the
future their lives were to be linked in one and
their children in turn be builders of the western
empire.
Well do I remember, the afternoon, when our
captain, that was to be, came to our portion of
the Wyoming camp and listed those who were
to journey as Independents, of which my father
was one. That was the first time that I had
beheld a typical captain of the western plains.
And still I remember his massive form, his keen
eye, his commanding voice and gestures. But
his true southern accent plainly told that he had
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 29
not long lived in the west, but was from the land
of the sunny south.
There should be a sketch of "The Slough," I
remember such was made. Indeed, it should be
the first in the book. But careless hands have
torn it away. The first is one looking eastward
over the river toward the Council Bluffs. For
eastward lay the Missouri River. We saw the
steamer Welcome, which had brought us up
stream, the Red Wing, and other olden time
boats passing occasionally up or down the stream.
But westward the level horizon attracted our
eyes and made us long for the time when we
should start to follow the setting sun.
Persistently, and with eager curiosity, the
guide-book was scanned. For weeks ahead we
studied the meagre information of "The Route."
We learned the names, suggestively odd or
quaintly poetic, and we pictured in the mind the
places themselves to which they belonged. We
formed conclusions to be realized later on or to
be dispelled by the actualities. The imagination,
heated to the utmost by traveler's tales half
30 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
true, half false looked forward to a region of
wonder and romance. Already I had met that
"boss of the frontier," the western tough, who
had kindly offered with the help of his bowie-
knife, to slit or cut off my youthful ears. I had
looked upon the frontier log-cabin, half store, half
bar, decorated with the skins of the beaver and
the wolf, and seen the selling by the moccasined
fur-traders of buffalo robes. Before us was the
land of Kit Carson, we should pass through the
domains of the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Crow
and the Ute. We would see the Bad Lands ; the
burial trees of the Arapahoe; the lands of the
Medicine and the Scalp-Dance. In our path
were the villages of the Prairie Dog, the home of
the Coyote and the rattlesnake; of the antelope,
of the buffalo, the big-horn and the grizzly bear.
Prairie Creek, Loup Fork, Fort John, South Pass,
Wind River Mountains O many a name seized
upon imagination and held it fast.
And the names of Chiefs Mad Wolf, Spotted
Eagle, Two Axe, Rain-in-the-Face they were
as from some unwritten western Iliad.
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 31
But I return to the sketch-book. Indeed it
has made imagination wander.
The second sketch in the book is a view near
the Missouri River. It is looking westward and
shows a Nebraska landscape with a prairie fire.
The scene is, indeed, a very different one from
what the place would present today. A great
prairie fire is sweeping across the plain and the
dense whirling mass of smoke, driven before the
wind, and the principal feature of the sketch,
overshadows with its darkness a far-reaching
landscape of low, rolling hills, clumps of trees and
a winding stream, in which, however, there is not
a sign of human life visible. The stream is a
small one, probably the Blue Creek, or it may be
the Vermilion, or, perhaps, the Shell. Which
one of these I have really forgotten. And the
margin, too, is unmarked. Now that region is
covered with villages and farms and the smoke is
from the chimneys of homes where prosperity
and modern comforts are to be found. The
sketch shows a wilderness, so great is the change
wrought since that day it was made.
32 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
"The O'Fallen's Bluffs." The third sketch is
a hasty one. The sky and the river the slow-
flowing Platte, are responsive to the light of a
golden sunset. The brilliant rays come from be-
hind the huge, square, sedimentary cliffs, and
which throw a shadow across the foreground.
The main interest in the scene, however, is not
that given by nature, but in the presence of man.
It shows our long train of wagons how slightly
sketched coming down from the bluffs, and
winding toward the radiance along the dusty
road.
And so we had made a start! We had un-
raveled, a few at least, of the mysteries attendant
upon the management of cattle; we could yoke
and unyoke; we knew the effects of "gee" and
"haw," and could then throw four yards of black-
snake whip with a skill and force that made its
buckskin "cracker" explode with a noise like the
report of a pistol. We knew, with tolerable ac-
curacy, the moment when to apply, to let off the
brake, the degree of modulation in the voice that
would enable the intelligent oxen to understand
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 33
just how much to swerve to the right or the left.
We were fast becoming teamsters, "bull-whack-
ers;" theory had given place to practical knowl-
edge, and, moreover, we were not only becoming
experts upon the road, but also in those many
bits of untellable knowledge needed to make
bearable the discomforts of camp-life.
Dearly we learned to love the Platte ! Dearly
we learned to love the wide and shallow stream.
Even if the way was dreary at times, we forgot it
when passing along the river banks. "Egypt, O
Commander of the Faithful, is a compound of
black "earth and green plants, between a pulver-
ized mountain and a red sand." So wrote Am-
ron, Conqueror of Egypt, to his master, the
Khalif Omar. And so might then have been
said of the Valley of the Platte. Day after day
we trudged along, and day after day the red hills
of sandstone looked down upon us, or the prairie,
like the desert, stretched out its illimitable dis-
tance. The days grew into weeks, the weeks
became a month, and still the cattle, freed from
the yoke, hastened to slake their thirst at the
34 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
well-loved stream. During that month, surely,
we ate, each one of us, the peck of dirt if sand
may be classed as dirt which every man is said
to eat in his life time. It filled our eyes, too, and
our ears, our nostrils. It was in the food; it
sprinkled the pan-cakes; it was in the syrup that
we poured over them. Half suffocated were we
by it, during some night-wind, as we lay beneath
our wagons. O, ye sand hills of the Platte in-
deed we have cause to remember.
To the Overland traveller of today, the Platte
is almost unknown. But from the time we first
discovered the stream, yellowed by the close of a
July day, and overhung by ancient cottonwood
trees, until we bade it farewell at Red Rocks,
within view of Laramie Peak, it seemed, was, in-
deed, a friend. As on the edge of the Nile, the
verdure on its banks was often the only greenness
in all the landscape round.
"What possible enjoyment is there in the long
and dreary ride over the yellow plains," Rideing,
in his "Scenery of the Pacific Railway," asks that
question. "The infinite space and air does not
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 35
redeem the dismal prospect of dried-up seas. The
pleasures of the transcontinental journey," he
goes on to say, "may be divided into ten parts,
five of which consist of anticipation, one of reali-
zation, and four of retrospect." With us, at least,
it was different. From the railway one is but a
beholder of the scenery; but in "The Old Jour-
ney" we were partakers therein. We became
acquainted with the individualities, as it were, of
the way. And then how we crept from one oasis
of verdure to another. In the simple scenic com-
bines, too, of the river, rock and trees, what
change! But the railway did not follow our
devious course.
One there was in our company who, like Phil
Robinson, of travel fame, remembered the prin-
cipal places along the road by the game he had
shot there. Here he had dropped a mallard or a
red-head; there, upon that hillside he had made
havoc among a covey of rock-partridge, in that
grove secured the wild turkey, or, on the banks
of that stream, he had brought down a deer, and
on that plain had ridden down a buffalo. A good
36 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
way this, no doubt, to remember the leading
features, and special places through which our
journey lay; but, unlike my fellow traveller, I
recall now all the good spots for bathing. O,
what joy it was, after a half, or full day's experi-
ence of dust and toil to plunge into the cooling,
cleansing waters of spring or stream. O, the
Platte! But I must not omit my pleasure in
other waters. Now I see the waves of the Elk-
horn, now those of the Big and the Little Lara-
mie; and, now, through a fringe of long-leaved
arrow-wood, the cold, deep waters of Horse Shoe
Creek. One day as I bathed, Spotted Tail, the
famous Sioux Chieftain, and his band of five hun-
dred braves, passed along the banks of the Platte.
Open mouth I stared at the wild cavalcade, and
while wading ashore, I struck my foot against,
as it proved to be upon examination, a great
stone battleaxe. Perhaps it once belonged, at
some remote period of time, to another great
chief in that famed and haughty warrior's an-
cestry.
"A Gathering Storm" the unbroken prairies!
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 37
We are brought by this subject to grand phe-
nomena. Heavens what piles of cloud, what sol-
emn loneliness! The clouds no wonder that
the Indian of the plain has many a legend about
them!
"Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the
mighty Omahas;
Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud whose
name thou hast taken."
"Billowy bays of grasses ever rolling in shadow
and sunshine."
Magnificent! But this imperfect little sketch
cannot reveal the truth, can only suggest. No-
where are the clouds more wonderful than when
over, never is solitude more impressive than in
the open prairies.
The clouds, the clouds ! Yes, through many a
twilight hour, I watched, lying upon the tufted
prairie as the camp-fires died away, the clouds.
Weird was the hectic flushing, the glow of the
38 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
sheet lightning among the July and August cu-
muli. But these clouds in the sketch are filled
with portent. Not only is the prairie darkened
with the approach of night, but with the coming
storm.
Here are two famous objects ; famous, at least,
in those days, not far apart, and following each
other in the book "The Court House," and
"The Chimney Rock." Distinctly I remember
the day on which we first sighted the latter a
pale blue shaft above the plain. We had just
formed the last semi-circle of our noon corral and
through its western opening was seen the Chim-
ney, wavy through the haze that arose from the
heated ground. It was my father who pointed it
out to me. It afterwards seemed to us that the
slow-going oxen would never reach it; or, rather,
that they would never arrive at the point in the
road opposite that natural curiosity ; for the emi-
grant trail passed several miles to the northward
of the low range of bluffs of which "the Chimney
Rock" is a part. One evening several of our
company tried to walk from our nearest camp to
*6/ '
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 39
the terraced hills that formed the Chimney's base,
but the distance proved too great. That was one
of our first lessons in the deceptiveness of space
the distance to hills and mountains.
From the banks of Lawrence Creek, from
where the sketch was made, the bluffs, and the
Half -Way-Post, the name by which the Chimney
is sometimes suggestively referred to, are most
picturesque. Strings of wild ducks arose from
the rushes of the creek side as our train ap-
proached.
"Scotts' Bluffs" make a very different picture
from those of the O' Fallen's. The sedimentary
heights of the former, with their strong resem-
blance to walls and towers, are shown in the
sketch rosy with the light of the rising sun. In
the middle distance, in a little swale of the pic-
ture, is a train corralled, the still blue smoke ris-
ing in many a straight column from the morning
camp-fires. In the foreground are sun-flowers, a
buffalo-skull among them.
Ah! here is a sad, dark sketch "Left by the
Roadside." A tall, rank growth, and a low, half-
40 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
sunken headboard are seen against the sky in
which lingers yet a red flush of the twilight. Two
or three stars shed their pale rays from afar, and
one feels that the silence, is unbroken by even the
faintest sigh of wind. But certainly there will
come one soon, a long, shivering, almost moan-
like sound, as the night wind begins to steal
across the waste and gently stirs the prairie grass
and flowers.
Yes, after those years it is the Human Com-
edy; it is the never-ending drama! It is the
wonder of that which grows upon one. It is the
desires, hopes, trials, pleasures, sorrows of the
race ! It is the remembered action that interests
me in these sketches. The book is filled with the
transcripts of once noted places, but my mind, as
I look upon them, is filled with thoughts of men
and women. It is those who passed among the
scenes who are of interest now. I recall the Pio-
neers themselves. I think of them, filled with
hope, yet anxious, eager to begin the new life
that lay before them.
The action! The search for the Fountain of
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 41
Youth, the desire for knowledge, the thirst for
gold, these have led men into the wilds; it has
taken them to brave unknown dangers in un-
known lands. Yes, these, the Propaganda and
the love of Freedom, but neither is stronger than
the desire for Religious Liberty. Ponce de Leon
in the Land of Flowers; Lewis and Clark making
their way along the Oregon, the Catholic Fath-
ers, the gold-seekers of California, and the Puri-
tans of New England these are our examples.
And like the latter were the Pioneers who pre-
ceded us along our way. And our company, too,
such it was that led them. Near the frontier I
had looked into a deserted cabin it revealed the
ending of a drama. He who would have found
the magic waters, the home and the gold-seeker
left behind them many a lonely grave. The Pro-
pagandist, the Lover of Freedom left their bones
in many an unknown spot. And the Pioneers?
They, too, must leave their dead. He who built
that deserted cabin had met with failure, death
was the end. But the seekers of Religious Lib-
erty? Surely they must have found the greater
42 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
consolation in the hour of trial; to them must
have come more quickly the thought of peace.
Action! It is true; one might have become
easily wearied of the monotonous trip. The
shifting panorama might have become monoto-
nous in its shifting. Monotonous, I mean, were
it not for, I repeat the word the action. The
plains, the streams, the rocks, the hills, all be-
came important because these led the way. Ever
my thought is of the road.
Countless in numbers almost were the graves,
on plain and mountain, those silent witnesses of
death by the way. The mounds were to be seen
in all imaginable places. Each day we passed
them, singly or in groups, and sometimes, nay,
often, one of our own company was left behind
to swell the number. By the banks of streams,
on grassy hillocks, in the sands, beneath groves
of trees, or among piles of rock, the graves were
made. We left the new mounds to be scorched
by the sun, beaten upon by the tempests, or for
beauty or desolation to gather around as it had
about many of the older ones. Sometimes when
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 43
we camped the old graves would be directly
alongside the wagons. I recall sitting by one
that was thickly covered with grass and without
a headboard while I ate my evening meal, and of
sleeping by it at night. One remains in my mind
as a very soothing little picture, a child's grave ;
and it was screened around with a thicket of wild
rose that leaned lovingly over it, while the mound
itself was overgrown with bright, green moss.
I fancied then that the parents of that child were
they yet living, the mother, who, no doubt, had
left that grave with such agony of heart, such
blinding or tearless grief, would have liked, in-
deed, to have heard the sweet singing of the wild
birds in the rose thicket, and have seen how
daintily nature had decked that last bed of the
loved one.
How painful were the circumstances attending
the first burial in our train. A woman died one
evening, we were about ten days out, just as the
moon had risen over the prairies, and swiftly the
tidings spread through the camp. Next morn-
ing, it was the Sabbath Day, she was buried, laid
44 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
to rest on a low, grassy hill top near the banks
of a stream. Never can I forget the grief of her
children as the body of their mother was lowered
into the ground. I can hear their cries yet,
those cries that they gave, as they were led away,
and their wagon departed with the rest. A net-
work of stakes was placed across the grave to
keep away the robber wolves; a short, short ser-
mon was preached, a hymn was then sung, ac-
companied by the plaintive wailing of a clarinet,
and prayer made to the services a solemn close.
That first death made a sad impression upon
us. But after a while the burials from our com-
pany had become so frequent, that they lost
much of their saddening power; or, rather, we
refused to retain so deeply the sadness, throwing
it off in self defense.
The outline which follows brings up a different
train of thought "Camp material abandoned
after an attack by Indians." The ground is lit-
tered with all sorts of indescribable things. Panic
is evident in the reckless tossing away of every
kind of articles; anything to lighten the loads,
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 45
so that the fear-struck emigrants could hurry
forward. This was the train immediately pre-
ceding ours, and a couple of days later we passed
one of those prairie letters an ox-shoulder blade
or skull on which was written :
"Captain Chipman's train passed here
August 14th, ,1866.
8 deaths,
90 head of cattle driven away by the Indians.
Great scare in camp."
Apropos of alarms from Indians there is a
rapidly executed subject, from memory the next
day, that brings back a night of peril and sorrow.
It was on the western slope of the Black Hills,
and there were four wagons of us belated from
the general train. We were the last five on the
right-wing, and the right-wing was the latter
half of the train that night, so, practically, we
were alone. There was a dead woman in the
wagon next to ours, and to hear the weeping and
sobbing of her little children, in the dark beside
46 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
the corpse, was heart chilling. The poor hus-
band trudged along on foot hurrying his single
yoke of footsore cattle. Still we were far be-
hind; liable at any moment to be cut-off by the
prowling Sioux. That was a night to remember.
Here are two scenes among the Black Hills
themselves, one is a very suggestive sketch show-
ing rocks, timber-clad bluffs, and ragged peaks
with the wagons of our train coming down a
deep declivity into a dry torrent bed. Wild
clouds are coming over the peaks threatening a
stormy night. It appears that the wagons must
topple over, end over end, so abrupt is the de-
scent they are making. In the second sketch,
made on the evening of the following day, the
train is seen winding like a serpent over the
hills. In the middle distance is a valley, partly
obscured by mists, and beyond it Laramie Peak,
purple against the sunset clouds and sky.
The night drives were among the most trying
experiences upon the Overland Journey. Usually
they were made necessary to us from the drying
up of some spring or stream where we had ex-
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 47
pected to make our evening camp, and the conse-
quent lack of water for the people as well as
cattle, so that we must move forward. Our
worst drive of this kind was to reach the La
Prelle River after leaving Fort Laramie, Saint
John's, on the night which followed the making
of the first of the two sketches just mentioned.
Wildly the lightnings glared, their livid tongues
licked the ground beside us. The road was de-
luged in the downpour of rain; and what with
the sudden flashes of light, the crashing of thun-
der, the poor cattle were quite panic-stricken. It
was hard work to make the poor brutes face the
storm. Yet, after all, their sagacity was greater
than ours. Several times we would have driven
them over the edge of a precipice had not their
keener senses warned them back. We would
have shuddered, so our Captain afterwards told
us, could we have seen where the tracks of our
wagon wheels were made that night.
Yes, to the emigrant company of those days,
the drying up of a stream was often of serious
import. Water enough might have been carried
48 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
to quench the thirst of human beings, but what
of the many cattle? The ox that suffers too
much from thirst becomes a dangerous animal.
Let him scent in the distance the coveted water,
and who shall curb his strength? How nearly
we met with disaster from this same cause.
Almost useless were the brakes ; how fiercely the
thirst tortured animals strained at their yokes.
It was a pitiful sight, and as we approached the
broken, boulder-strewn edge of the stream, our
position was somewhat dangerous. No less
dangerous was the task of removing the yokes
from the impatient creatures, and of unloosing
the chains.
I try to recall my diary, for I did keep a diary.
I did not find it among the old relics where was
hidden the sketch-book, and the chances are that
long since it has been destroyed, perhaps fed to
the flames. In spite of slightness it must have
contained many an interesting fact about "The
Journey." But I cannot recall a word. The
events which gave rise to its entries grow fresh
in my mind, but the wording of the matter itself
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 49
is gone. I know it contained the data which
would give the exact number of hours in which
we were upon the road, and that I would like to
know. I remember writing about Scott's Bluffs,
and how they received their name. One fancied
that he could see the wounded trapper, aban-
doned and dying alone, and wondered if he
crawled down from the bluffs, and along the way
we were travelling. And which was the spot,
too, where, at last, his bones were found. There
was something, too, about the gathering of buf-
falo chips, and the seeking of firewood. On the
latter quest, what lonely spots we did visit ! One
comes to my mind at this moment. How weirdly
the wind choired in the ancient cedars, and how
very old appeared the boulders with their mot-
tling of lichens, and with what a dismal yelp a
ragged coyote leaped from his lair and scam-
pered down a rock-strewn gully! It was tanta-
lizing at times to keep to the road. How could
one resist the temptation to throw off restraint,
and, putting all prudence aside, wander or go
galloping on horseback away over hill and
50 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
through dale ? What if the redman did lie in the
path? He could be a brother. O, but to be like
the Indian; to live wild and free, to be "iron-
jointed, supple-sinewed, to hurl our lances in the
sun!"
This, of course, was on those days when, hav-
ing taken "the winds and sushine into our veins,"
we felt stirred within us the instincts of primal
man. At other times we were sober-minded
enough. The romance of being out in the wilds
was terribly chilled by an inclement sky. A few
days of drizzling rain tried the most ardent spirit.
Then it was that the disagreeableness of the time
made the true metal of the emigrant show itself.
Whatever traits of character he possessed self-
ishness, senseless fault-finding, or those rare
qualities of kindness, cheerful content, and ready
helpfulness all come out. In Mark Tapley's
own phrase, it was all very well to "come out
strong" when by the warm glow of the flames or
when moving along with the bright blue sky
above us, but it was quite another task to remain
cheerful when the incessant rain made impossible
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 51
even the smallest or most sheltered of camp-
fires, and one crept into his bed upon the ground
with wet clothes and with flesh chilled to the
bone, without even the solace of a cup of hot tea
or coffee.
Hardly less trying were the days of dust-
storms. What misery it was when the wind
blew from the front and the whole cloud of dust
raised by over three hundred yoke of cattle, and
the motion of sixty-five wagons drove in our
faces! How intolerably our eyes and our nos-
trils burned, and how quickly our ears were filled
with the flying sand or alkali !
I should like to read once more, those diary
entries. Was there anything written, I wonder,
about those silhouettes upon the hills? What
did it tell, if anything, about the alarm that was
spread through our Company? Had we the
unlearned known more about the ways of the
Indian we would have realized that they those
shadows were no Sioux. Yet it was disturbing
to the unknowing to see those figures, those
mysteriously moving horsemen of the night.
52 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
Thank heaven! It was but our own scouting
herdsmen. But for once, to those assembled
within the corral centre, O, how too long seemed
the hymn, and even the prayer ! How impatient
we were to know the truth.
In "The Cedar Bluffs" the wagons that are
sketched corralled are not our own. They com-
prised a small freight train, and right glad would
they have been to, and most likely they did, creep
along, as it were, in our wake. There were no
women or children in that train, its members
were all of the daring "freighter." These were
men willing to meet with any danger. Perhaps
there might be among them men inexperienced,
but they must have possessed intrepid hearts.
Rough of the rough, but daring they certainly
were. Woe to that little band if later they met
the Sioux. It would mean, for them, annihila-
tion. What rude pranks the Indian did some-
times play! The Sioux or Cheyenne, he would
take bales of bright stuffs which he sometimes
found in the freighters' wagons, fasten one end
of it to his pony and let the hundred yards un-
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 53
ravel and flaunt on the winds as wildly he dashed
across the plain. There was a brutally comic
side to the character of the western Indian.
A brutal side! Yes, and there was often a
comic side to the white man's fear. Well, in-
deed, a friend of mine has told it. Twelve young
men comprised a company; two wagons and six
yoke of oxen made up their outfit. That cer-
tainly was taking their risks in those perilous
times! Yet they were unmolested. Once, in-
deed, they thought themselves at the mercy of
the Sioux; as truly, in another way they were.
Death and the scalping-knife appeared their lot.
But it was all a hoax. What had been taken for
the painted savage was but a party of whites
with blankets over their heads to keep away
the rain. Taking into consideration the really
dangerous position of the little band, there was
a tragic-farcical touch in their list of arms. My
friend's sole means of defense was a butcher-
knife some six inches long.
But in a later adventure, so he told me, the
farcical part was left out. That was an experi-
54 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
ence in which, if the tragedy was also wanting,
there was a most severe test upon his nerves. He
had left the camp, taking a fowling piece with
him, and he wandered along a stream. He had
just taken sight upon a skein of wild fowl, and
was about to fire, when suddenly a band of In-
dians came from behind a bank, and in another
instant the shot would have been among them.
But luckily he had not pulled the trigger. How-
ever his attitude, the pointed gun made him an
object of suspicion. The Indians were upon the
war-path, but not with the whites just then. My
friend was surrounded, and he must explain to
the satisfaction of the savages who he was, and
why he was there. He was finally released, how-
ever, upon proof that he was from a camp of
whites near by. But all the same it was an or-
deal to stand surrounded by those painted sav-
ages, scalps dangling from their pony saddles.
And it was one that the actor therein would not
have cared to repeat.
It did produce upon one a disturbing sensation ;
that knowledge, I mean, of how often the eyes of
41
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 55
ambushed Indians might be fixed upon one. And
the wild animals, too! From the distance they
watched. Herds of buffalo, perhaps, or of deer,
looked upon our moving train from the plateau
tops. Beyond the flaming yellow sunflowers,
amid the bright red of the rocky hills, the Sioux
was often concealed. His face was painted of
the same gaudy colors, and he looked with blood-
lust upon us. We knew not when this might be ;
yet that it was always possible gave a sort of
aspect of menace to the bluffs and hills along the
way.
Many a time had Captain Holladay with his
natural caution gained from experience; his sa-
gacity and knowledge, given a timely warning.
The girls must not be led too far by their passion
for the gathering of flowers. How often had the
desire to possess some especially beautiful or bril-
liant, some alluring bunch of desert bloom tempt-
ed them beyond the lines of safety. Especially
true was this among the Black Hills and the
mountain ranges, too, beyond them. There was
danger, also, in the going for water, the dipping
56 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
places were often at quite a distance from the
camp. How terrible an example was that which
occurred in one of the trains which crossed the
Hills the year before our own. It was on the
banks of the LaBonte River. A band of five
Sioux suddenly dashed out from amid a clump of
trees on the river bank, and carried away, beyond
all hope of rescue, one of two girls who had rash-
ly gone too far down the stream. The train re-
mained at the river for a period of three days, the
Indians were pursued for many miles, but it was
all in vain. The young husband never saw his
young wife again. One of the young women was
slightly in advance of the other, and those few
steps made this difference, that one was lost, the
other saved. And the young woman who es-
caped was the writer's sister.
Something of all the passions ; something of all
the passions joy, love, hope, fear, and the
others, too, must have been recorded in the pages
of that diary. Or, rather, there should have been
had the youthful writer of those pages put down
upon them what he once actually looked upon,
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 57
as now he recalls them mentally. They must
have told, too, how a foe even stronger than the
Sioux, one not to be gainsaid, took away a sister
at last. We took the oaken wagon seats to make
her little coffin. Did it tell how we laid her away
to rest; after those days of suffering, when she
was carried by turns in our arms, to save her
what pain we could ; did it tell, then, how she was
laid beneath the cottonwoods, where ripple the
waters of the Laramie, and how the soil was
hardly replaced in the grave ere we must depart?
Did it tell of the wild night of storm and dark-
ness, through which later we passed? The re-
mainder of "The Journey" was for us, darkened
by that ever-remembered tragedy.
Love, upon "The Journey" O it was sure to
come! Where will not love follow, where is it
not to be found? Coquettishly the sun-bonnet
may be worn; coquettishly the sun-flower may be
placed at the waist, or the cactus bloom amid the
dark-brown hair. By what strange and circuit-
ous routes are lovers brought to meet ! Through
what strange and unforseen circumstances does
58 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
love begin! In our Company were there not
those maidens who could still walk coquettishly
and with grace, although it was their truthful
boast that their feet had measured each mile of
the lengthened way? Were there not those in
whose red cheeks the prairie sun kissed English
blood? The man from the west, why should he
not learn to love that beauty from Albion's Isle?
How delightful when danger did not lie in am-
bush, to walk, arm locked in arm, far ahead of the
leading wagon; how delightful to sit amid the
flowers and to feel the solitude of the boundless
prairie! Yet love is a danger that lurks every-
where. To linger, ever so short a distance be-
hind the train was a grave offense. Each mem-
ber of the Company knew this rule, they knew it
was a, rule that must not be broken. Of course
one need not make a capture as did that savage
brave ; one need not, whirling by upon his desert
horse, stoop sideways and lift to his side a
screaming and unwilling bride. Nor did one
care to imitate that enamored chieftain of the
Cheyennes. Should one make an offer of a hun-
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 59
dred ponies? Yet, if the Captain, upon his steed,
like a Knight of old, should be found with a
pretty girl riding beside him, what an example
for others to follow ! One there was in our Com-
pany, a youth, who had returned from the west,
passing over the road again to find his father's
grave. He had come, too, to meet his mother
and sister by the Missouri's banks. Fate had
willed, however, that the father's grave should
not be found ; two years had elapsed since it had
been made, and nature, with storm and floods had
hidden it away, and so the one who slept there,
sleeps there still, and the mountain winds, the
thunder, and the voice of the passing stream, still
make his requiem. On that eastward trip our
Captain had learned to love this youth. And on
the westward trip he learned to love even more
the sister. For she it was who later became our
Captain's wife. But why repeat the romance?
Life, Romance, Death indeed they were busy
in our little world ! The space between the two
semi-circles of wagons made a wide division; it
was like the two sides of a street, each wagon a
60 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
dwelling. One could hardly believe that in such
a company, isolated from all the rest of mankind,
such a separation could exist. Yet such a separa-
tion existed between "the wings." At times the
members of the one side hardly knew what was
happening among those of the other. But there
were certain events, of course, that would form
the link. As we proceed upon our way what
changes come ! I mean into the lives and hearts
of many. But come there new joy, or come there
new sorrow, the Pioneer must live the pioneer's
life. There were always the labor, the priva-
tions, a certain kind of pleasure. There was left
but little time in which to brood. Except, it may
be, in the silent watches of the night. There was
something remarkable, too, about the manner in
which the cattle became imbued with the spirit
of their driver. What individuality, for instance,
there was among the cattle themselves, our own
four yoke, I mean, it was modified by the driver.
Tex and Mex, Spot and Jeff, how easy to distin-
guish their characters from that of either Tom
and Jerry, or Lep and Dick. And yet as a body
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 61
how quickly they reflected the mental condition
of the one who drove them. Be he calm, be he
dejected or peevish, and the cattle knew it at
once.
Here is a suggestion of a sometimes unpleasant
duty "The Night Guard." His was a trust in
which anxiety and danger were often combined.
The picket on duty at the front of war is scarcely
more important to the safety of the troops than
was the Night-Guard to our Company. In those
days of lawlessness in red man and white, con-
stant vigil had to be kept. On the faithful per-
formance of the Night-Guard's duty our safety
depended. If we were not attacked, then the
cattle might be driven away, and we might be left
stranded, as it were, in the wilderness. Alone
with his thoughts, this important one at his post,
had ample opportunity for careful reflection. The
youth of the writer released him from the duty of
guard, and his father suffered from an accident
a foot partly crushed by one of the oxen but as
owners of cattle, as "Independents," we must do
a share and a double task fell to the lot of an
62 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
older brother. We had seen the disaster which
came upon the Company preceding ours, and at
Deer Creek we had also seen heaps of red and yet
smoking embers, all that remained of the station
there, and of the surrounding cabins. We knew
that the Indians who had done both the acts of
driving away the cattle and applying the torch,
were, in all likelihood, watching upon the road
for us. Our Captain never allowed an inexperi-
enced man to occupy too important a post, but
the "tenderfoot" could serve as aid.
We, like ships that pass on the sea, sometimes
spoke a returned. No gloomy recital of disap-
pointment could turn us back. The Golden West
was our goal, and those who returned were but,
to us, the too timid ones. In truth, has not the
dream of the Pioneer been fully realized? Those
men and women who endured so much? Did
they not gain, enmass, the victory? And those
who fell by the way they were as those who
perish in battle, but who leave the fruits of their
devotion and success to others. Those young
men who put their shoulders to the wheels, when
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 63
our wagon might have otherwise become fast in
the quicksands of the Platte, and those older men
and women, too, that I looked upon as they
trudged toward the West with the dogged deter-
mination of age, all made possible the future com-
monwealth. They ate of the fruit that was
raised from the soil, their sons and daughters in-
herited the land.
Men who now count their wealth by hundreds
of thousands, some by the millions of dollars, can
remember their vain strivings when poor and on
night-guard to look into the future; to see some
faint glimpses of what Providence held in store
for them in the Westward, Ho !
Three subjects that follow are by the Sweet-
water River. In one the Rattlesnake Hills are
shown dim in the summer haze ; in the second is
the Rock Independence, and in the third is the
noted "Devil's Gate," with its reflection in a pool
of the stream. What a real blessing, though per-
haps in disguise, is often enforced attention; en-
forced activity! Upon "The Journey" such it
was. O, it was a balm to many an aching heart !
64 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
A blessing the swiftly-changing scenes, the labor,
the unavoidable routine of camp-life! Those
whose trials were so great ; those whose grief was
so intense ; those who were so quickly compelled
to leave the new-made graves of their dead ; yes,
even these must take their part. There was no
escape. It was a fiat "thou shalt." The very
aged, the sick would lift themselves up in their
beds to look upon some famous place. The Rock
Independence, The Devil's Gate was not the
writer propped up with pillows to look out,
through the opening of the covers at the wagon
front, upon them? Those places we had thought
of, spoken of, for three months past there they
were. Many looked at them through tear-
dimmed, or sick-weary eyes. The apathy that
sometimes comes upon the traveller when he has
reached some famous or hoped-for place, is well
understood. But sometimes these climaxes are
too strong even for that to conquer. The burial-
tree of the Sioux ; the first band of Indian braves;
the buckskin dressed, the beaded, the dusky beau-
ty of the wild, they made a claim. Yes, as I
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 65
said, even the heart-stricken must look around,
i
must take an interest, even if languid or dislik-
ing, in the passing world. There was perhaps a
cruel kindness in this fact. All were compelled
to hear the music, the singing, the laughing, the
dancing, that followed, be the Company never so
weary, after many a long day's travel. This all
could hear as well as the hymn, the prayer. A
sudden shout "antelope !" "buffalo!" would
rouse the most dejected. Weariness, grief, found
many a strange yet wholesome tonic.
These questions occur to me while I write:
Had the emigrants remained at home, would
more of them have lived, would more of them
have died? I mean, would they have longer
lived, have later died? Ah, where comes not
life's tragedy? Come or go, remain the end is
still the same !
"An Exhausted Ox." This was a sight that
was not infrequent. When, upon the road, the
strength of an ox gave out, when it could go no
further, and tottered or fell, wearied beyond en-
durance, beside its mate, it was a matter of no
66 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
small import. It meant, perhaps, the loss of the
yoke, of their use, I mean, for it was hard to re-
mate an ox upon the road. Yet, at times, it must
be done. A plug of tobacco, bound between two
slices of bacon, such was the medicine that was
administered to the ailing ox. It was a kill or a
cure ; sometimes it was the one, sometimes it was
the other. Lep and Dick, the "wheelers" to our
leading wagon, were the largest cattle in the en-
tire train. And Dick, especially, was big, and he,
at our very last camping-ground, laid down and
died. But it was from the eating of wild parsley.
But, in few cases, there was hardship, distress in-
flicted upon the emigrant by the loss of cattle. I
have already instanced one case, that of the un-
fortunate man, whose wife died at night upon the
slopes of the Black Hills.
I am here reminded to mention another fact.
It was really quite a disclosure to see the chang-
ing appearance of the train. Not alone as it
changed from week to week, becoming more and
more travel marked, but also as it changed in
appearance, in order, I mean, from hour to hour,
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 67
as we moved upon the road. In making the daily
start morn or noonday the wagons would take
their place in the line with an almost mathemat-
ical accuracy. The noses of each leading yoke of
cattle would nearly touch the end-board of the
wagon preceding them. But soon this order was
broken. Such an incident as that related in the
former paragraph, or if not the actual happening,
then the weakened pulling force caused by some
happening of the day or week before, was the
cause. And, of course, this became the more
pronounced amid the mountains than upon the
plains. To keep this train compact under the cir-
cumstances was one of the chief labors of the
Captain and his aids.
Here is a wide gap in the locale of the sketches.
It is the result of a mountain fever. What a
gloriously majestic outline the peaks of the Wind
River Mountains make, and especially from that
spot, the High Springs, in the South Pass ! De-
lightsome days were ours as we moved slowly
forward through that broad and famous highway,
with that towering range of mountains all the
68 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
while seeming to gaze down upon us! Joyfully
we burst into song:
"All hail ye snow-capped mountains!
Golden sunbeams smile."
We made there, in the South Pass, if I count
correctly, our two hundredth camp-fire. There,
indeed, with our veiw, were the mountains; there,
among those gray and storm-worn boulders of
granite, welled forth the waters those that
flowed not to be lost in the Atlantic, but in the
Pacific. That dividing line, that mighty ridge
was the "Backbone of the Continent." Indeed,
with our first descent, and we were with the
West. Pacific Creek would be our next camp-
ing spot, and westward its waters would run.
From either of these great peaks, the Snowy or
Fremont's, how near we might see to the place of
our destination. From these summits might we
not discern other summits; mountains farther to
the west; the ranges whose bases were near to
the Inland Sea? Afar away it was over the
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 69
heights and vales, and yet it brought a message
"You are near the place of rest."
"A Buffalo Herd." This sketch could well
have preceded several, instead of following, the
one that it does. By the Sweetwater and along
the reaches of the Platte, there we sighted buf-
falo. And in Ash Hollow, too, and by La Foche,
or the East Boise River, we had seen the shaggy
creatures. Here, across a wind-swept level, be-
tween two mountain slopes, the buffalo were
changing pasture, moving leisurely toward the
south. They knew when would come the storms;
they knew where better they should be met.
Each eye-witness has told, verbally or in print,
how a distant herd of buffalo appears. They re-
semble a grove of low, thick-set trees or bushes.
On a distant plain or along a hillside, their round-
ed forms might be easily mistaken, were it not
for the moving, for clustered, sun-browned shrub-
oak. Ash Hollow was once a familiar resort for
the now rare animal. A traveller once saw there
a herd which could scarcely have numbered less
than fifty to sixty thousand. So vast were once
70 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
the herds in the Valley of the Upper Platte, that
it would sometimes take several days for one of
them to pass a given point. Woe to the small
party of emigrants that happened to be in their
track I mean a herd of frightened buffaloes.
Annihilation was their fate. The herd that we
now looked upon was not so great, yet it was
large enough to resemble a moving wood. Slow
at first, then with a headlong rush, and then,
thank heaven ! the herd dashed in another direc-
tion than ours.
Helter skelter, maddened by fear, with nostrils
distended, with set and glaring eyes, blind as
their wild fellows, scarcely less dangerous, was a
stampede of cattle. No longer the patient, sub-
missive creatures, whose pace seemed ever too
slow to our eager desires, but stupid beasts, full
of fury, dashing, they knew, they cared not,
where. A stampede of yoked and hitched cattle
was one of the most thrilling episodes of our
Journey. What was the cause of the stampede
I cannot recall, but its terror I will not forget.
What a screaming came from my younger broth-
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 71
ers, huddled in the wagon, and I may add with
truth, the delighted laughter of a baby sister.
What a moment was that in which the racing cat-
tle headed towards a steep, overhanging bank of
the Platte ! It was the climax to many a night-
mare for many a year thereafter. Bancroft Library
And while, through this misplaced subject
"The Buffalo Herd" I go backward, as it were,
on our journey, I might refer to a sketch that is
partly torn away from the book. From what
remains of the leaf I gather that the drawing
which once covered it when entire, was "The
Passing of the Mail-Coach." On the slopes of
Long Bluff there lay a wreck. It was the skele-
ton, as one might call it, what remained of a
coach, that had been stopped by the Sioux. The
leather was cut from its sides, by the Indians who
had killed the driver and driven away the horses;
and the ribs of wood and iron stuck up from the
sand and gravel that had been washed around it.
But this one in the sketch was not a coach that
told of a tragedy, but one that went speeding by
our camp, leaving a cloud of dust. In our hearts
72 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
were regrets that we could not speed as fast. "The
Man on the Box" was important in his day. He
was an autocrat of the plains. When he brought
the coach to its destination, that was if he hap-
pened to be on what was called "the last drive,"
he would draw on his tight-fitting, high-heeled
boots; he would wear his richly-embroidered
gloves; he would be the hero at "the Hall," the
swell at "The Dance."
For us was it not tantalizing to know how
quickly, compared with our slow progress, that
coach would reach "The End?" Somewhere,
probably ere we reached the mountains, we
would meet that coach returning. The Jehu
who drove it would come to recognize our Com-
pany as he passed us by. The guard of soldiers
would know us, and he and they would pass, re-
pass the train before us, and also the one that
followed. Yes, we followed the original trail of
the Pioneers but, of course, there had been
changes. The Pony Express was a thing of the
past, and soon the stage-coach would be. But
this latter change was not yet. There were m-
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 73
mors, too, surveyors had been seen near the Mis-
souri's banks. Anon, and the iron-steed would
course the plains; it would find a path through
the mighty hills. But this, too, was not yet. O,
we were in a wilderness, true! No need for us
to see the wreck of the mail-coach, the burned
station, or the dead Pony Express, arrow-slain,
the pouches gone, the letters that would be so
long waited for, scattered to the many winds.
No need of this, for us to know the dangers we
had passed, or to make us rejoice that we had
arrived in safety thus far.
Who would blame us for our times of merri-
ment? Who shall wonder at the time of rejoic-
ing that followed on our arrival at Pacific Creek?
Of whether our higgest jubilation was at Chim-
ney Rock, or whether it was there, our first camp-
ing place on the Western Slope, I fail to be sure.
But this I know, whether it were at the one or at
the other, the facts about it are the same.
Blankets were stretched between two wagons, a
sheet was hung, there was a shadow pantomime,
declamations were given, songs were sung. O, it
74 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
was indeed a time of gaiety ! When the evening
meal was over and the call of the sweet-toned
clarinet assembled all in the open corral, then
what times! Men and women, the young, and
the old ones, too, danced the hours away. Who
would have thought there had been such a hard
day's journey? Forgotten were the fatigues that
had been; and those that were to come. It was
such hours as these that atoned for those that
had been wearisome, for those that were sad.
That clarinet what an important part it held !
It voiced the general feeling of the train. Be the
company sad or merry, like a voice it spoke. Mer-
rily, on the banks of the Missouri it sounded at
the moment of starting, mournfully it spoke as
each one who fell by the wayside was laid to his
rest.
ft. ,yi f .jyy. r
I I I^Fttf 1*1 ^F-Nr '
I seem to hear it once more as when it awoke
us, too, for the last start near the Journey's end.
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 75
Its remembered strains bring back the scent of
prairie flowers and the mountain sage.
Here is the "Ford of the Green River." This
reviewing has been lengthy, but we near its close.
This ford of the river is not where the railway
crosses it at the present time, but farther up the
stream, where in the distance, to the north-east,
the jagged summit of the Wind River Mountains
were again in view, and where on the river banks
are groups of cottonwood trees and thickets of
wild raspberry and rose, and the air is aromatic
with the exhalations of wild thyme. It is a stir-
ring scene, for the water was both deep and swift
and the fording not accomplished without con-
siderable labor and risk. A half-day's rest on
the banks of the Green River, as well as the at-
tractiveness of the place itself, makes the scene of
that sketch remembered with pleasure.
Small need to tell how expectancy grew upon
us as the number of miles ahead became less and
less. Even those who had at last apparently
grown apathetic and walked silently along, or sat
questionless in the wagons, began to again mani-
76 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
fest the same eager interest which had marked
the days of our starting out. Wake up! wake
up ! wake up ! Fun and frolic must sometimes
take the place of sentiment and sobriety, and so
one who was ever brimming over with both,
could not wait the poetic summons of the clar-
ionet. Beating together two old tin pans he
frisked around the corral, rousing with the un-
seemly noise all laggards and slug-a-beds.
"Cliffs of Echo Canon." This brings us within
the borders of Utah. We had climbed from
Green River to Cache Cave, we looked upon the
one range of hills, the one only, that divided us
from our destination. Clear shone the Septem-
ber sun, as our long train moved slowly under the
conglomerate cliffs; slowly, for half of the cattle
were footsore, and all very weary. Several hours
were consumed in passing through the wild de-
file, and night was falling ere the mouth of the
canon was reached. Later, as the camp-fires
were blazing, the full moon illuminated the fan-
tastic scene.
Who of all those who traversed Echo Canon in
THE PIONEER TRAIL. 77
an ox-train will forget the shouting, the cracking
of whips, the wild halloes, and the pistol-shots
that resounded along the line, or the echoes, all
confused by the multitude of sounds, and passing
through each other like the concentric rings on a
still pond when we throw in a handful of pebbles,
flying from cliff to cliff, and away up in the shag-
gy ravine and seeming to come back at last from
the sky.
"O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going !
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying ;
Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying,
dying."
No wonder the place recalls Tennyson's song,
but, it must be told, there were none of "the
horns of Elfland faintly blowing" about the wild
hilarity of sounds which were sent back from the
cliffs that day.
The last sketch in the book is "A Glimpse of
78 THE PIONEER TRAIL.
the Valley." Not one in our company but what
felt the heart swell with joy as the sight of fields
and orchards, in the latter of which hung ripened
fruit, burst upon our sight. Danger and fatigues
were all forgotten. The stubborn, interminable
miles were conquered, "The Journey" was at an
end.
