CHAPTER XXI
The Parting of the Ways
THE picturesque red-sandstone cliffs of Red Buttes and the granite-ribbed range of the Sweetwater Mountains were left behind us. Slowly our train climbed up the gentle grade to South Pass. But this thoroughfare over the backbone of the continent proved to be a disappointment, as it failed to present the striking characteristics of a mountain pass. In one respect, at least, its top is not unlike the North Pole, for it is admitted by Arctic explorers (Cook and Peary of course, always excepted) that they find it impossible to locate the Boreal end of the earth with exactness. Similarly the transient through South Pass is unable to determine within several miles where his pathway is actually at its highest point. An expansive though shallow depression is found where the summit ought to be, both east and west of which, as we follow the trail, lies a broad, level plateau, and it would be impossible without an instrument to ascertain which side is the higher. On both sides the approaches to the Pass are very easy grades, each merging almost imperceptibly into the table land of the broad summit. To the south, along this great divide, the surface rises step by step and many miles further away in the distance it continues on in smoothly rounded mountain billows. To the north the ascent is also gradual, until twenty-five miles from the trail there rises the base of Atlantic Peak, which is the great southern spur of the bold and rugged Wind River Range. From the slopes of this range issue the remotest tributaries of the Sweetwater River, the stream we had been following. We saw not even a rivulet upon the highland known as South Pass, the flow of which would mark the watershed. Finally we reached Pacific Spring, a diminutive fountain whence a scanty flow of water, oozing from the mud, crept along for a time slowly to the westward. We then knew that we had crossed the great Continental Divide. Here we pitched our tent, and further down the brook the other outfits camped. Although the altitude is but seventy-six hundred feet, the ground froze at night. Some of the snow from the recent storm, which was said to have lain fourteen inches in depth a few days before, still remained on all the lands above the pass. The country for miles around was bleak and destitute even of sage bush. From a small cedar log which we had transported a long distance to meet such an emergency, we chipped a few splinters to build our fire. Each member of our party being provided with a soldier's overcoat, we wrapped ourselves in those garments and were soon to be found standing, very close together around the little blaze. A blue veil of smoke rose also from similar fires at each of the other camps, bearing through the clear air the sweet incense of burning cedar, which was quickly followed by the appetizing fragrance of coffee and bacon.
We were to make a long drive on the following day, for we had learned that after leaving the Pacific Spring no water would be found on our course within a distance of twenty-eight miles. As a start was to be made at three o'clock in the morning, the boys began early to pull out their blankets and find a warm spot for the night. But where is the man with soul so dead, so devoid of all appreciation of nature when she is in one of her rarest moods, who would not wish to watch a remarkable sunset? The sun was sinking behind the mountains of the Bear River Range which, white with the recent snows and extending from north to south, lay one hundred and fifty miles distant to the westward. Far, far away to the south and extending from east to west, rose the white-topped Uinta Range, which south of us seemed to merge into the high lands of the great divide, crossed by the pass and extending westward until it closed in with the western range, forming the base of an immense triangle of mountains, the eastern side of which was the Continental Divide, upon which we stood. Extending northward from our camp, this dividing ridge rises gradually until it meets the foothills of what is now known as Atlantic Peak, which is the southern buttress of the lofty Wind River Range and is twenty-five miles away. Continuing northward, beyond two high intervening summits, this range culminates in Fremont Peak, the monarch of that range, and, as later surveys show, still one hundred miles from our trail. The apex of this triangle of mountains lies north of Fremont Peak, beyond which rise the grand Tetons, one of the most imposing ranges in our country. From the Tetons I have also seen these peaks of the Wind River Range. Within this visible area of mountains lies the highest watershed of North America, whence, from an area of fifty miles square, flow tributaries to the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Gulf of California, and the Salt Lake basin.
The triangular disposition of the mountain ranges as they lay before us, at this time outlined by their snow-capped summits, is not clearly shown upon the maps, but of such a form was the impression made upon our eyes. Away down below us and between the sides of that great triangle, thus walled in by mountains, lay the broad basin into which converge the upper tributaries of Green River, a stream which in turn breaking through the Uinta Range rushes southward to join the Colorado, and thence onward through its titanic canyons to the Gulf of California. And now, while the western mountains were casting their far-reaching shadows across this broad basin beneath us, the cold, snow-mantled sides of the Wind River Range were dazzling and glittering in the level beams of the setting sun. From our point of view and at that time they were seen at their best. It was not like an Alpine scene, diversified by mountain lakes, waterfalls, and picturesque chalets, but it had a suggestion of wonderful breadth and vastness and afforded a range of vision rarely to be seen, except when one looks upward to the stars; but the whole of that landscape of mountains, and the deep, broad desert which they enveloped, was bleak and desolate, with never sign of animal life nor trace of vegetation visible. Though to us it was a new country, everything appeared to be old, as if through countless ages it had remained unchanged. With this impression stamped upon our minds, many members of our party wrapped their blankets round them and slept under the open sky.
It happened on that night, one or two nights after the full of the moon, to be my duty to stand guard until midnight. Hence it fell to my lot to watch a dazzling, winter-like sunset in midsummer, which, because of the prevailing whiteness, imparted hardly a tint as the daylight faded, except what was seen in the star-studded azure above. After a brief period of declining light there was a wondrous change when the clear, cold, and pearly moonlight broke over the eastern highlands and lighted up the vast, white, frosty landscape, for the moon was now in her glory and, and thus in harmony with the earth upon which she shone, for the distant landscape was spotless white, and the vast stretches of mountain ranges which, along many hundreds of miles, pinnacled the distant horizon with towers and minarets, were covered with crystals of frost and snow.
"Chaste as the icicle
That's curdled by the frost from purest snow,"
It was at the break of the coming day when our little outfit closely followed by Mr. Warne's party rolled out in advance of the long train, and by sunrise we were following the very gentle descent of the western slope, across sandy and gravelly wastes, which were relieved here and there by barren, flat-topped clay buttes, for the sun had done rapid work with the snow in the lowlands. The night found us at Little Sandy, an unruly stream six or eight yards wide, which was doing its best in an unceasing endeavor to make the dreary desert interesting. According to the old Mormon diaries, (to which reference has already been made) it was near this ford, June 28, 1847, that Brigham Young and his party first met Jim Bridger. Jim was a famous mountaineer and guide, an almost constant wanderer through those wilds, and might be encountered at almost any out of the way place in the Rockies. On summing up the meager records in the diaries, and my personal interviews with some of those first pioneers, it appears that Bridger, with two of his men, had come over from his fort on their way toward the Pass and had struck this Oregon trail, probably at Green River. Fortunately for the Saints they met toward evening near this stream. Learning that the traveler was Bridger, the Mormons prevailed upon him to camp with them over night, because he, above all others, was the man they most desired then to meet, because of his familiarity with the Salt Lake Valley, concerning which the Saints had no definite knowledge.
To reach Salt Lake they must soon leave the well defined Oregon trail. The remainder of their course was to be guided, if at all, by the narrow trails of the trappers. It was up and down these tributaries of Green River and into the wilds of Pierre's Hole and Jackson's Hole, between which lie the majestic Tetons, that the fur traders and hunters found the most profitable game in greatest abundance. From among the men engaged in this pursuit was organized the Rocky Mountain Fur Company – Jackson, Green, Biddle and others, whose names are still familiar in St. Louis, being interested in the venture. In later years LaBarge, Sarpy, Picott, Pratte, Cabanne and other St. Louis men entered the business. Many of the men occupied in these operations were Creoles, the name applied to French or Spanish people born in America.
In memory of David E. Jackson, the magnificent valley on the east slope of the Tetons was named Jackson's Hole and the beautiful lake resting within its bosom was named Jackson's Lake. Thus in those valleys were scattered several hundred pioneers of another type than men who have carried civilization into our now older territory, with possibly the exception of the upper lake districts. Some of them were French Canadians or half-breeds, trained in the service of the Hudson Bay Company. A few were expert marksmen from Kentucky, and with them were many hardy Missourians, with St. Louis men as leaders. In addition to those turbulent and apparently heterogeneous groups of nomadic pioneers, there appear to have been many independent trappers and traders, who also were restrained by no ties and subject to no written laws. Although these latter were pioneer explorers and accumulated great wealth for the companies that employed them, they were not the men who discovered and developed the resources of the great West. Though confronted by many perils and hardships, they loved their vocation and the wild and wandering life along the mountain streams. Their passion for the hunt was well expressed in the lines:
"Give me the lure of the long, white trail,
With the wind blowing strong in my face as I go;
Give me the song of the wolf dog's wail
And the crunch of the moccasin in the snow."
Of this type was Jim Bridger, a hero and a chief among the mountaineers. In the interview that night on the banks of the Little Sandy, surrounded by the exiled leaders of the Mormon Church, he directed the Mormons where they should leave the Oregon trail, and then follow chiefly along trappers' paths, and through the mountain canyons to Salt Lake Valley. Those narrow paths, as far as they should be used, would be simply for guidance. Along and beyond these they must blaze and clear their own roadway for wagons, and must ford many mountain streams.
"But tell us about the valley itself," asked Brigham Young, after the mountaineer had outlined the most practicable route to reach it.
"Well, Mr. Young," replied Bridger, "I wouldn't go into that alkali valley to raise crops. I'll give you one thousand dollars for the first ear of corn you raise there." He then proceeded to describe the desert which surrounded the saline waters of the lake, in which no life could exist. The substance of this conversation was recited to me one afternoon at Bridger's home. At the time it occurred the Mormons had not learned that the Salt Lake country had been ceded by Mexico to the United States.
This interview between Bridger and the Mormons and the subsequent turning of the Saints from the old trail, as there recommended by Bridger, brings us to the point where, leaving the scene of that conference, a small detachment of our party were also soon to turn from the same trail and follow in the tortuous mountain paths taken by the first Mormon emigrants, as mapped out for them by Bridger. Dan and Noah and also the Warne family and others who had been our traveling companions across hundreds of miles of desert and on excursions up the mountains, were to continue with the big train on the Oregon trail. The information that this separation would be made at Green River crossing, then but a few miles before us, came to us unexpectedly. We knew nothing of those western trails except those which we had already traversed. None of these paths were shown upon our maps. The recent days had been gliding by, as days sometimes do when brightened by the mystic influence of congenial companionship.
It is needless to state that the boys deeply regretted the necessity of so soon parting from their old friends Dan and Noah, and from Mr. and Mrs. Warne and their obliging driver, Bill Swope. In this list we should not forget also to mention the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Warne, who, being bright, cultured, and refined, seemed like exotics in that barren wilderness. One evening, when Miss Margaret Warne was sitting upon a rude box while others completed the circle around a sage bush fire, and her soft voice was being listened to with rapt attention, one of the boys whispered to his neighbor and said, "That soap box is now a throne, for that girl upon it is a queen." The young man who whispered the words was dead in earnest. Old Deacon Cobb, who owned many horses and whose observations concerning men and women were of course made from his own peculiar standpoint, often remarked the daring, freedom, and grace with which the girls mounted and rode their horses. Dan had said that they were fine conversers and well informed on general topics. These attractive, winsome girls were going into some part of Montana that was unpeopled by civilized beings, where it seemed that their light and influence would be wasted, as would the sparkle of a gem in the desert sands. The boys lamented this sacrifice of personal worth. They thought little, cared less, and in fact did not then know, as no one then knew, of the hundreds of emigrants who were to follow later and settle around the home of this family and receive from it that uplift which, in the establishment of a new colony, one family may exert upon the moral and social life of the community.
As already indicated, the boys were hardly ready to say good-bye to the young ladies, but it was impossible for them to present some reason why they also should see Montana.
It is difficult for the present day traveler to comprehend the peculiar situations and emergencies that sometimes confronted the western emigrant in the early days, when they were as effectually removed from the restraints, conveniences, and conventionalities of civilized life as if they had been transported to an uninhabited island. An example of such a crisis, even more striking than that in which our young men found themselves when nearing that fork of the roads, was related to me by a member of a family who shared in a strange episode, which culminated at the parting of the ways which we were soon to reach.
It was in the summer of 1849, when a wagon train of emigrants captained by George Scofield, the head of the family last mentioned, was slowly crawling over this same road on its long way to the newly discovered gold fields near Sacramento. Among the emigrants who had been traveling under the protection of the Scofield outfit were a few who were bound for Oregon. With the travelers who were destined for California was a young and vigorous farmer from one of the Middle States, whose name was Pratt and who was accompanied by his wife and six young children, the youngest being an infant and the oldest hardly ten years of age. Mr. Pratt, like the majority of the pioneers, had embarked his all, when he started to cast his fortune in what was then an almost unknown territory. The long line of covered wagons crossed the Mississippi River and rolled out over the plains. In a few weeks the stock of provisions was practically exhausted. Many of the horses were run off by the Indians, leaving a heavy burden upon the animals which were left. While the men were toiling by day and watching against the savages by night, the women also had their work to perform and their vigils to maintain, for the children had their weary hours.
While traversing the desert, Mrs. Pratt became a helpless invalid, and in spite of her husband's efforts she and the children were suffering from neglect. With her parents, bound for Oregon and accompanying the train, was Miss Huldah Thompson, a strong, kind-hearted, young woman, who became deeply interested in the unhappy condition of Mrs. Pratt and her children, and with the noble impulses of a Florence Nightingale, she voluntarily served them to the limit of her strength.
Weeks passed by, and one blistering hot day, while the train was dragging along beyond the stream, Little Sandy, Mrs. Pratt died. The train was ordered to halt while men and women held a council near the dusty, covered wagon in which lay the remains of the young mother. Nothing could be done except what always had been done when one of such a company dies, where there is no cemetery except the broad bosom of Mother Earth and no person within reach fitted to conduct funeral rites. Therefore, while the train stood still, as stop the engines of the ocean steamer while the body of the dead is consigned to the sea, the sympathetic emigrants circled around the hastily dug grave by the roadside in the desert, while the body from which the spirit had taken its flight hardly an hour before, was lowered into its solitary tomb.
Then again the line moved slowly on the long drive toward the ford of the Big Sandy, before reaching which no water would be found, and there they camped.
Huldah had been a stranger to the Pratt family until they were brought together on this pilgrimage across the plains, and now the day after the burial, the train was expected to reach the forks of the road at Green River, and Huldah, with her parents and other friends, was to proceed on the Oregon trail, while Mr. Pratt was to continue under the protection of Scofield's train along the new Mormon trail. Pratt was heart-broken. Huldah was sympathetic and helpful to the last moment.
A new light began to dawn upon Pratt, and a new emotion rose within him. If anything was to be done in response to this newborn inspiration it must be done quickly. During the hours of the only evening whose shadows fell after the burial, and before the expected separation, Pratt and Huldah were engaged in earnest converse. This brief courtship was concluded by summoning the Thompson family and Mr. and Mrs. Scofield to a midnight conference on the bank of the Big Sandy. The Thompsons finally yielded to the inevitable, and the definite approval of all members of the little party was given to the plans proposed. The morrow was to be a day of unusual activity with the emigrants because of transfers of loads and teams to be made on dividing the train, and hence the night after the burial presented the last opportunity to solve the delicate problem then before the little group which had convened. It must be now and forever or never.
There being no officer of the law and no clergyman in all that broad wilderness who was authorized to perform the marriage rites, Huldah without further ado and in the presence of the witnesses there gathered at midnight on the bank of Big Sandy River consented then and there to become Mrs. Pratt. On the following day the train reached Green River, where Mrs. Pratt bade adieu to her father and mother and proceeded with her husband on a honeymoon trip toward California, with many months of travel still before her, along a route where possibly not even a hut would be seen after passing the new Mormon settlement near Great Salt Lake, at which point it was hoped that supplies would be obtained.
Although other emigrants who continued with the Scofield train failed to reach the Eldorado of the West, Pratt and his wife, Huldah, with their family, made the trip with safety and became a part of the remarkable civilization that characterized the early California settlements.
We also had camped at Big Sandy, a stream varying in volume, but now about three feet in depth and easily forded. A dozen Confederate soldiers, then loyally in the service of the United States Government, were temporarily stationed there, to afford a nominal protection to the few trains then passing that way. In the evening, Ben, who was fresh from his army life, led the veterans to recitals of many of their recent experiences on southern battle-fields. One more day of travel brought us to Green River. The country traversed is a barren clay land, inhospitable, and apparently sterile, presenting hardly a blade of grass to relieve the monotony of the scenery. The young people who had saddle horses, caring little then for scenery, rode leisurely in advance of the train and planned somewhat for the future.
A rough looking old frontiersman had established a ferry at Green River, which, in conjunction with trapping wolves, and selling whiskey and other necessaries, enabled him to earn a livelihood. His tattered garments and the exterior of his hut and its surroundings left us with the impression that he was not enjoying great prosperity. His charges for ferrying seemed to be somewhat excessive, but the stream being very swift and the water at points being ten feet in depth, we concluded negotiations for the portage and camped on the further shore of the river.
As it is our purpose to describe some of the movements that led to the development of the West, we must here and there secure glimpses of the emigrants who undertook that work, even though it be through eyes other than our own. I find in a diary written by a member of the Mormon pioneer train, that when that party reached Green River, to which we have just referred, the company was there met by one Samuel Brannan who, with other Mormons, had sailed round Cape Horn to Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) intending to establish a colony on San Joaquin River. Knowing of the proposed emigration of the Saints, he started eastward with two companions, hoping to meet Young and his party. The diary states that on his course Brannan and his party passed a camping ground where nearly fifty emigrants had perished from storm and famine, there being but one survivor, a German, who had subsisted several weeks on human flesh.
We return now to our night near the banks of the Green River. As it was my watch from midnight and we were to roll out at daybreak, I retired early with a few words of farewell to those from whom we were to separate, leaving others to enjoy the later hours, as parting friends are apt to do. It may be stated now that some of the boys later made a visit to Montana, but for a time this thread in our story is broken. It was in the gray light of the morning that each member of our party was roused to his respective service. The teams were rushed in while the breakfast was being prepared, and at sunrise all were off for the still further West. The main train turned to the right, and our party to the left. After a mile or more of travel we halted upon a hilltop, before descending out of sight, and from the distance we heard the last shouts of good-bye from the other train, accompanied by waving of hats and handkerchiefs, after which our now very small party moved on alone.