Whither thou Goest

This is, first, not a conventional history, because I am not a historian, I am a writer. Considerable nonsense has been written lately about “creative nonfiction,” a term that implies, to me, that the writer is adding a little imagination (or lies, if you favor the short Anglo-Saxon word) to the truth. I have tried to supply correct information, and where supposition was required, I have made a sincere attempt to be objective. Time is often cruel to those who attempt to write history. If further information concerning these early struggles is discovered, and if that information proves me wrong in some way, I apologize in advance. Second, this is not a simple travelogue, a book on travel accompanied by photos of resorts and a list of the latest places to stay. Nor is it strictly a book for handicapped travelers, even though my wife Anne’s right leg had been replaced by a prosthesis forcing her to spend much of her time in a wheelchair. Instead, It is the story of two journeys west: one of my great-grandaunt, Mary Jane Beardsley and her family, who traveled west in a wagon train in 1878, and the other of my wife and I trying to discover the paths they took, the people they met, and the places they lived and passed through. Mary Jane was searching for a new life in the West. I was searching for my roots among both the living and the dead. Anne was beginning her new life as an amputee, never too far from her wheelchair. She wondered if her life would ever be the same again with only one leg. She wanted to “spread her wings,” so to speak, and try out her new life. Not only was this to be a trip across America, it promised to be a journey through time and emotion. In 1996, my wife Anne and I followed my grandaunt’s trail. At least two thousand emigrant diaries exist describing the day-by-day events of the overland journeys west in the nineteenth century. Some of them were written at the same time as teenager Eva’s diary, and describe the same places. I expected at least one of them to tell of bumping into the Beardsleys; but none that I have read so far has. Eva’s diary is quite skimpy—she wrote just enough for me to determine which way they went—so I have included entries from contemporary diaries. I will let these diarists tell the story in their own words, with as few square brackets as necessary. Some of the emigrants were Mormons, who had begun their journey as far away as Liverpool, England. Others came from all over Europe and still others were freed African-American slaves, evading or braving gangs of armed whites in the employ of Southern plantation owners, who were alarmed at the flight of their cheap labor. A major Black exodus to the West began in 1877, after the end of Reconstruction in the South. But most of the emigrants of the late 1870s were white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, as were the Beardsleys. All, however, were searching for greener pastures. Some were very devout, and wished they did not have to travel on the Sabbath. Others never mentioned religion in any way. All wrote of their three main concerns: feed and forage for their livestock, fuel for fires, and water. Most of the diarists were women, and most of those were housewives and mothers; about ten percent were teenage girls. As late as 1840, Oregon’s American population amounted to fewer than two hundred souls, almost all of them in the Willamette Valley. However, reports of missionaries and of U.S. ships scouting the coast on official reconnaissance missions began to circulate back East. Letters from settlers telling of rich land to be had for the taking gave hope to the farmers of the East and Midwest, who were still suffering from the economic consequences of the Great Panic of 1837, when all the banks failed and money became worthless. It was a time worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. A new mood was upon the land, a belief in a popular concept that became known as the Manifest Destiny, which held that the republic had a divine mission to spread from coast to coast. Gone was the belief that the Rockies were the ultimate limit of American expansion. This combination of economic and ideological pressures first bore fruit in the spring of 1841, when the first wagon train of sixty-nine pioneers set out for the Far West. The next year a group of more than one hundred traveled from Missouri to Oregon. Both groups had to abandon their wagons along the way, but in 1843, in what became known as the Great Emigration, missionary Marcus Whitman realized his great dream of American migration to Oregon by guiding the first wagon train—with nearly a thousand immigrants—to the Pacific Coast. He later established the Whitman Mission, just east of Walla Walla, Washington, destined for tragedy. Traveling by covered wagon, on horseback, or very often by foot, these “overlanders” followed the Oregon Trail. Usually starting in Independence, Missouri, they crossed the plains along the North Platte River, rested at Fort Laramie, traveled through the Rockies via South Pass, stopped at Fort Bridger, and headed to Fort Hall on the Snake River. The immigrants survived more barren and mountainous terrain before reaching The Dalles for the hazardous descent of the Columbia River to the Willamette Valley. The journey stretched for two thousand miles and lasted 150 to 180 days. There were many reasons why people pulled up stakes and left their homes forever to live in western America. Some were pushed by inability to find farms close to parents or relatives, inhospitable social or religious environments, nagging loads of debt, or clouded land titles. Others were pulled by opportunities for cheap land, tales of rising land values and fantastic crop yields, the urging of relatives already in the new country, and newspaper stories or letters singing the praises of the frontier region. Oregon was admitted as a free state to the Union on February 14, 1859 and by 1878, its skyrocketing population was already 150,000. Some were embittered bachelors, bereaved widowers, or independent young women but most were families, communities, or even religious congregations. Many of the wives went unwillingly, dreading the disruption of family, the dangers of the trail, and the primitive conditions of pioneering. Others welcomed the adventure and shared their spouses’ hopes for success in the West. By 1878, there were many trails. The Pony Express had come and gone, replaced by the telegraph. Stagecoach companies had built new roads and railroads were feverishly laying tracks to replace the stagecoaches and become the lifeline for farmers, ranchers, miners, and the business of the West. But many pioneers still traveled by covered wagon, even alongside the railways. It was cheaper and they could take all their belongings as well as their livestock. It was also dangerous. As Mary Jane traveled on the stagecoach roads and along the railroads west, the last major Indian War broke out, the Bannock Indian War of 1878. I will do my best to tell the story of these two journeys west.