# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 22/Documentary number 2

​Storys Gate Coffee House Gt. George Street Westminster
November 4th, 1773.
Addressed To the Kings Most Excellent Majesty Endorsed Petition of
Jonathan Carver to
The King.
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DOCUMENTARY
LETTERS OF S. H. TAYLOR TO THE WATERTOWN [WISCONSIN] CHRONICLE
[Editorial in Watertown Chronicle, March 16, 1853]
FOR OREGON.—S. H. Taylor, Esq., and family, of this city, and Amos Noble, of Emmet, will start this week for Oregon, by the overland route. They will be accompanied by two or three families from Illinois. Mr. T. has promised us a series of letters giving a description of the route, and such information of the country as may be of interest to the general reader. He will also become a regular correspondent of our paper after reaching Oregon. His well-known ability as a writer is a sufficient guarantee that these letters will be full of interest.
[Watertown Chronicle, April 13, 1854]
OREGON BOUND.
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE WATERTOWN CHRONICLE.
Owen, Ill., April 4, 1853.
Friend Hadley—I write merely to gratify the kind interest ​felt in our success, by cherished friends whose hearts we believe are following us here.
We left Watertown Wednesday morning, and my family reached here Sunday, and I on Monday—65 miles—after wading through 40 miles of mud almost to the wagon axle. At the Fort, the first night, one of my cows made her escape, and I did not overtake her until I had got back within 8½ miles of Watertown. I then hurried on and overtook my family at night at Milton, in mizzling rain and sozzling mud. Although the cow had traveled 55 miles since 7 o'clock of the day before, and without rest and with little food, she was again missing in the morning. I found too that my coat while drying was burnt up, and making a rush for my hat, that too was gone—and with my blessings on the landlord, house, cow and mud, and things generally I put back on the road, missing, the cow at 5 miles, and again going within 8^2 miles of Watertown. Supposing her to have been stolen, as she in fact had been, I returned and found her after 45 miles more of literal wading in the mud.
The next day, Saturday, the last of the frost came out, and the roads were the next thing to utterly impassable. At Janesville I navigated 7 miles of road that was in neither wagoning nor boating condition. North of that place, over the low prairies, the surface is too even and the fences too continuous for either the water or traveler to escape. The fate of both is the same—to go right down through. At almost every step I sunk to my ankles, and was thankful for my flat feet that kept me from going down deeper while my poor cow went down to her knees. And over that whole way, I met not a single man, woman or child, from whom to get even the cold comfort that it was 4 miles through. And I assure you it was far from comforting, when I had made that 4 miles to Janesville it was then 8 miles farther and worse!
At Milton, for the first time in Wisconsin, I heard the demoniac, hyena yell of the "train"—so fiercely significant that it neither stays nor turns save of its own will—bating of ​course the necessities of grease spots and parabolic—though the latter, it seems, in this road, under Mr. Kilbourn's improvements in railroading, are substituted by angles. The cars came in there with a jolting, rattling sound as if running on pavement—and the first thought was that they were off the track running right along over the hubs on a straight cut to the next turn of the road. It was a mizzling, dense, palpable night, and as the cars crept slowly and noiselessly away to the west, it required no great stretch of the fancy to the thought that they were afraid to run in the dark. And if they were animate, it might well be so—for just west of Milton, a mile or so, the track takes a short turn around the point of a gravel ridge, where the first impression of safety is in being ready for a jump, or footing it over the point and taking the train as it comes along. The man whose name is associated with this road, will live in the memory of men, forever; at least he ought to.
I have been over northern Illinois and 150 miles, or so, into Indiana—over a region that I traveled 15 years ago. On every hill and valley and stream, the Anglo-Saxon has, in this little time, written his character in signs that a half century of barbarism could not efface. After leaving the lake region and going south into Indiana, although the setment [settlement] dates back far anterior to that of central Wisconsin, the improvement is much less marked. The southern Hoosier is seen in their roads and fields and buildings and towns, as readily as in the peculiar phrases and wanging tone of voice of the people. Where the country has been settled from the eastern and middle states, the progress has been truly wonderful. Where, 15 years ago, the traveler threaded his weary and solitary way over the plains and through the openings on Indian trails, finding the rude habitations of men scattered here and there far from each other, and now and then a mere saw mill frame, perhaps, erected, with the miller's cabin by it, the whole country, even the prairies, are covered all over with fields and dwellings, and each "water-power" is the ​nucleus of a "town" now spreading itself over the hills, its streets walled in with massive structures of brick and stone, and presenting an appearance of life and power that might be expected after a half century's labor and growth. Where, a few years ago, men plodded on foot over vast and trackless wastes, seeking vainly for any conveyance, you are now in the tide of a thronging multitude, hurried away by the steam car on its iron track at a speed which the most closely scanned objects flit by you half unseen, and the still water in the pool by the way side, quivers as the ponderous train rolls over the trembling earth.
There is nowhere—at least where I have been—such progress as in Wisconsin. Her agricultural country is better and more universally improved, her towns are larger, better built and more active, there are more evidences of thrift and less of poverty, than anywhere where I have been. I have seen more frame barns on Wisconsin farms, in 30 miles, and there are more towns on the 50 miles intervening between Watertown and the state line, down Rock river, than on any 150 miles of the best part of Illinois or Indiana. I am satisfied that there is not in the northern part of these states, an inland town equal, in any respect to Janesville or Watertown. No man can open his eyes, and keep them open, during opportunities for observation, without being satisfied that Wisconsin is very far superior for all purposes of civilization, to the region lying south of it—and that it is destined to the support of a far more powerful community. Could the people of your state realize the position it now occupies, and that to which it is rapidly and certainly hastening, they would be prouder of their homes and labor with more of hope and zeal for the future.
Of Watertown itself—Janesville is the only larger town in this interior. Rockford is now entering into advantages by which it may beat Watertown—perhaps—but remember my prediction, that Watertown is bound to outstrip every place on this river except Rockford.
​I have fooled away a good deal of time, and it is getting late, so I will just say what I intended to in the beginning. We are all either well or better, and in good spirits intending, with some dozen other families, to leave to-morrow for Kanesville. In poddling through the mud after my cow, I saw a little of going to Oregon, and if there is any truth in the saying that a "bad beginning makes a good ending," we have a good reason to hope for a successful ending.
I expect to write you from Kanesville, which we do not intend to leave till about the 5th of May. Everywhere there are families and crowds of cattle Oregon bound.
I know not what to say to those who gave us such touching evidences of their regard. Please say to them as you meet them, that we find as yet, and I believe we shall find, the parting with our dear friends there, the most painful feature in the undertaking in which we have entered.
Yours, &c., S. H. Taylor.
[Watertown Chronicle, July 6, 1853]
Council Bluffs City, May 24, 1853.
Friend Hadley—Yesterday the 23d, after 47 days, mostly on one of th worst roads in the world, we arrived at this place, and with about 300 people and 1000 head of cattle, kept back and dammed up by floods and broken bridges, "sat down before the town." The season has been wetter than any that has preceded it for many years, and all the late companies are from eight to fifteen days behind their time. The tide, however, has been up to its flow and swept on. Ten thousand strangers have been here in a month, and are gone again, and the town begins to be desolated and still. It is built of log cabins, one story high, on both sides of a street running about 60 rods down the bottom of a ravine, between high, dirty clay hills, where it can neither see nor be seen. There are perhaps a half dozen two story buildings in the place, all devoted to gaming, the only business that can afford to live in them. ​
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I know not whether there is a frame building in the city. Their stores and offices are all in little log buildings, that would be a disgrace to almost any Wisconsin farm, and would not be allowed to stand a week in any Wisconsin village. I have not seen a school house, nor a church, in the town, nor indeed have I in any other Mormon settlement. There is not in the city, a trace of taste, pride, enterprise or public spirit. Wherever the Mormons have established themselves in this country, you can see the clearest evidences that society is sinking rapidly downward.
The whole country from Lyons, on the Mississippi, to this city, is under the dominion of the Mormons and Hoosiers, and its condition is what would probably be expected by one acquainted with those settlers. You would hardly believe what I should tell you of it. A man accustomed to the state of things among the Yankees, would be unprepared to credit a true statement of the condition of things.
We have traveled 337 miles, across the state, through its capital and in its greatest thoroughfares, and we have not crossed a stream 60 feet wide or over, without paying toll; have not seen a stage coach nor any other public conveyance, nor a public house out of a village, nor indeed a village as large as Watertown. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the country, showing enterprise. Even at Iowa City, the capital, a village of 1200 inhabitants, where the Iowa is I should think not more than 15 rods wide at high water, they have a toll bridge and the people pay annually in toll one- fourth enough to build a fine bridge. A settlement of Yankees nine miles from the city, offered to give $3,000 if the city would give $1,500 to construct a free bridge, and it could not be raised. The city has nothing Yankee in its appearance neither gardens, orchards, nor many of what you would call even second rate houses. The capitol is a building little su- perior to the Jefferson 2 jail, and the public grounds around it are a mere common for the herding of cows and the storage of lumber.
2 Watertown, Wis., is located in Jefferson county. ​
OREGON BOUND 1853 123
Pella, a village of 400 Dutch and Yankees, is the only town on the road where we saw gardens, fruit and ornamental trees, walks, good buildings, and such other evidences of taste and enterprise as you see in Wisconsin towns.
Lyons has about 200, De Witt 200, Tipton 400, Iowa City 1200, Pella 400, Kanesville 500 people in all less than 3000 and there are not 400 more in all the many of what the Hoosiers call "right smart villages" on this road. Instead of taverns, they have here "wagon yards" the sign of which is over the barnyard bars. The Hoosiers seldom go from home, and go in covered wagons, carrying their living with them, and merely wanting a place where they can cook and feed. Their wants are all supplied in the barnyard and that is the extent of the hotel. They have no railroads, plankroads, turn- pikes, not even bridges and their public roads are laid gen- erally where the land is poorest and most broken, and there only from two to three rods wide. The Hoosiers, many of them, understand that it will take the Yankees to make any- thing of the country, and freely expressed the hope that the railroads from Lyons and Savannah to the Bluffs will bring them in.
I believe there is more mail matter delivered in Jefferson county than at all the offices on the great road and I ques- tion, indeed, whether there is not more delivered in Water- town alone. Having seen nothing that looked like U. S. mail, I asked a postmaster how they got their letters. He said a man brought them on a horse every week from the east through Iowa City. I asked if "in his breeches pocket." He said, "he might." And that is the eastern mail to Kanesville weekly but, says the P. M. here, we have two a week from the south!
Until I reached here I have not seen a newspaper since we crossed the Mississippi ; and you may be assured that those four Chronicles you sent me to this office were right gladly received. I read one and keep the others to read on "the plains." Our people all seized upon them with the avidity of children. We have plenty of books, but we are all Yankees ​
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and need the "news," and shall feel sensibly the want of your paper regularly on the road.
We intend tomorrow to enter upon the great waste wild that lies now west of us. I cannot tell you so that you can relish how we feel as we are about to go. Since we were here I have seen many go out, and I have seen no countenance free from evidences of strong emotion. Our departure is one of those hours occurring seldom in life, on which the past and the future press heavily. There are painful thoughts of those who are dear to us and with us; visions of sickness and pain that rivers of sympathy cannot relieve, and of death where death comes without any of the consolatory influences that Christianity and humanity can shed about the grave, and of the burial and desertion of precious remains on the desert, where the waves of empire will go over them as unheedingly as the sea goes over its dead ; and there are earnest thoughts of friends who are behind and whose passionate love will go after us as vainly as the wind and we know not how many, but there are many bitter repentings. Many regret that they are going though few can be induced to say so much; and many more, I apprehend, are conscious that they have not acted wisely in entering upon the enterprise.
We go out in a company of about 20 effective men three of them Methodist preachers 13 wagons and about 200 head of cattle. The determination is to observe the Sabbath strictly. We go well armed, but I believe generally trusting about as much in God as in our arms.
Horse trains went out on grain as early as April 18th, but companies with cattle did not go out trusting to grass until about ten days ago. It is considered barely safe now to go out with horses and depend on grass solely.
I have seen enough of "going to Oregon" to be enabled to give some advice to those who may hereafter go. We are now past a portion of the route that is acknowledged, in a wet season like the present, to try the ability of teams as fully as any part of it, and I have learned that the condition is more ​
OREGON BOUND 1853 125
important than the age of cattle. More cattle are supposed to have given out on the road in this state, than will, with the same usage, fail hereafter. Those that have failed are of all ages, but, in all cases, I presume, in poor condition. It is not well, however, to take heavy cattle. Those that are young and no more than ordinarily heavy built, travel easiest and longest. Men I have seen who have been through and are going again, generally have oxen from four to six years old, and loose cattle young, and none of them unusually heavy in the body. Cattle must be in good condition. Were I to prepare again for the expedition, I would grain up my oxen all winter, and have them fat when I started. And this is the opinion of all I have heard speak on the subject.
Stags do not make a good team unless they are quick. They are naturally too slow to travel with oxen, but if they are quick, their hardiness renders them far superior. We cannot rely much upon cows for draught. We make nothing of "break- ing in" a cow nor, in fact, anything else but they are of little service. A young man, who feels himself rather smart, seizes a cow by the horn with one hand, and with the other on her neck to hold her, lets her splurge for a minute or two, when she finds she is fast, and allows herself to be quietly led into the yoke, and in an hour is drawing as if proud of her new mission. And so we do with anything we want in the team. I got a stag, five years old, quick and strong, that had never been in the yoke, and a bull of the same age, a large, powerful, self-reliant animal, that had never had a restraint upon him, and knew nothing of restraints till we put a log chain on his head, and we have them now both in the team, the best animals in it. Cows, however, are not heavy enough for service, and are not reliable in bad places. I have two cows in the yoke, working very well, but they are of near twice the usual size and weight while they are the only ones in our company now in the team, though we started with a dozen or so
Emigrants should be particularly careful to have their wagons right. They should be very light and easy running. The cover ​
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should be low, and it is better to have it round at the top. The sloughs "slews" of this state are perfectly horrible. A man who has not been across it can form no conception of the evil. On any direct line from here to the Mississippi 397 miles by the road there are doubtless 2000 miserable "slews." The only way possible to cross them is to have a wagon that will go over them on the turf. This a carriage with a heavy top can- not do. Nor can these "slews" be crossed with heavy loads. We found it necessary to reduce the weight on our wagon's below 900 pounds. No wagon, in a wet season like this, can go over the sloughs with certainty with more than about 800 pounds. With such an amount it goes along over the turf, while with 1000 pounds perhaps it will invariably go down and such a going down as you never saw ! We have had ten good yoke of oxen on one wagon to get it out of a "slew," and that perhaps near ten times in one day. We have sometimes trav- eled for miles over high wet prairies where the wagon would constantly settle 3 to 6 inches into the ground.
I would advise any man intending to cross this state, to go down below Rock Island before crossing the Mississippi. The Indians had a trail striking from a point there, to the Bluffs, keeping a series of "divides" forming the water shed of the Missouri and Des Moines. The road from Dubuque by Cedar Rapids, that from Lyons by Iowa City, and all the others, strike right west or south west from the Mississippi into this ridge, and keep it. The Mormons, when they went to Salt Lake, took it on the Mississippi, and made the best road, now called "the Mormon Trail," that the ground will admit of. This is a good road. It is serpentine, but even, dry and hard. We came by Lyons and Iowa City, and have had about 140 miles of it, and we had rather our cattle would travel that 140 miles, than 50 of the road before we came to it. From Beloit, on the line of Wisconsin and Illinois, an ox team will go to Kanesville, at least in a wet season, in ten days less time by going down to the mouth of Rock river and taking this route, than by the straight roads. ​
OREGON BOUND 1853 127
Let no emigrant be fooled by the great efforts made at Iowa City and Cedar Rapids to induce him to purchase there his outfit of provisions. They can be obtained as cheap at Kanesville as at those places, and the extra carriage actually costs as much as they are worth. There are times when pro- visions are high here as at this time and for three days now, flour is $10 a barrel, bacon from $10 to $15 a hundred, &c. but even at such prices, nothing is gained by buying at Iowa City or Cedar Rapids.
Every effort that can be is made every where in this route to palm off provisions and forage on the emigrant. He is constantly told that "ahead there is scarcity, corn and oats $1, &c." Such stories are all impositions. This is the farmers' market, and every farmer's interest is to raise such products as it requires. An abundance is produced for it on every road where emigrants go, except within perhaps one hundred miles of Kanesville, where very few people live, and the little that is raised is soon consumed.
We go out with teams in as good condition, perhaps, as any that have left this point. Some fast companies passed us on the road, but we have passed some of them again, and believe we shall pass the remainder. More anon. Yours, &c., in haste,
S. H. TAYLOR.
[Watertoum Chronicle, July 13, 18531
Pawnee Country, June 4. 1853.
Friend Hadley We are now 90 miles up the Platte on the Loup Fork, in company with about 250 wagons, blocked up here, near what was called a ferry before it was flooded, wait- ing for the water to subside. We are in the heart of the ter- ritory of the Pawnees, the most skilful thieves that can be; and some are paying dearly for their misfortune. In this neighborhood they have stolen about 50 head of oxen, and every morning we hear of from two to six oxen being run off. About 200 Pawnees came here three days ago and are lying ​
128 S. H. TAYLOR
here with us, but with what intention we know not. We are not afraid of our lives but we find them very annoying. Dur- ing the day we keep our cattle constantly in view, and at night chain them up and keep up a double guard. All do the same but it is impossible to keep their hands off property when they attempt to get it. They will almost steal a horse from under his rider.
We move very slowly, but are gaining upon those ahead of us. It is the wettest season "known to the earliest settlers," and those who have been through in dry seasons can form no conceptions of the difficulties we have had to encounter. Even the road along the Platte, except a few miles along the base of the highlands, is horrible. Last Wednesday we saw many wagons set on the Platte bottoms, and I am sorry to say mine was one of them. We saw a little of the best of the road just before a rain and when it was very dry, and it was the best I ever saw in some respects equal and in others superior to a plank road. There are places where 30,000 loaded wagons have, within five years, passed along a track of not over seven feet in breadth, and there is no rut no depression of one inch below its original level.
The description of this country is generally embodied in the pithy expression that "it can never be settled." The plain . truth is, it is the most splendid country in the world, but with- out timber. From 15 miles this side of the Missouri, to this point, except the river flats, the surface is in fine easy slopes, or levels, and the soil cannot be excelled. From here back to Elkhorn, 60 miles, there is no timber but the cottonwood groves of the Platte, and that away in the midst of a wet valley from 8 to 15 miles wide. We traversed the banks of the Elkhorn 10 miles, and saw its valley 20 miles more, and it is to that extent skirted with noble cottonwoods, and its hillsides on the east are covered with grand old burr oaks. East of that stream, as we rise to its highlands, the country lies, how far back we know not, in the finest slopes and valleys. No man ever saw a more beautiful region, or one better adapted to ​
OREGON BOUND 1853 129
agriculture, than that lying along the Elkhorn. It cannot be long before the great depot of supplies will be transferred from the Missouri to this stream. The best opportunity I have seen for emigrants, is for 15 or 20 families to locate on that stream, establish a ferry, raise provisions and build up a town. Where we crossed they have ferried about 6000 wagons this season at $2.50 to $3 and that with one old scow and, perhaps, five men. A few Yankees settling at that point would draw all Kanesville there in two years, and make twenty fortunes for those who adventured.
How far the absence of timber will prevent or impede the settlement of this grand country, is, of course, mere conjec- ture but it seems impossible that with all its other advantages, it should be allowed to remain long, as it is, a desolation. The construction of the Pacific railroad, by which the Platte country will be admitted to Oregon, and the opening of the great coal bed that is supposed to extend from the Iowa river to the Rocky Mountains, will have much to do with the solution of the question what is to become of this great region.
Since crossing the Nishnabatony, 25 miles beyond Kanes- ville, we have not seen more than a rock in a place nor indeed do I know that we have seen one at all. The soil everywhere lies on a formation of clay and fine sand, such as fills the waters of the Missouri. The bluffs and hills about that stream, are mere prominences left by the powerful denuding forces to which the country has been exposed. I was told that there was coal on the west side of the stream below Kanesville but I should not expect it there, and think it doubtful. Coal, in the Missouri country, is probably very deep having at least the sand-stone in place, and this great bed of clay, the depth of which no one knows, above it. 170 miles east of Kanes- ville, near Pleasantville, and 240 miles near Montezuma, the coal appears in all the ravines, and the indications are that the supply is inexhaustible. With the opening of the railroad to the Mississippi, it must become an important source of revenue to the country. ​
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June 7. We have a prospect of crossing the Loup today. There are about 100 wagons here now but few coming in. We see many cattle trains of from 100 to 500 head probably about 1500 head now here. Many wagons have gone up to the fords, one of which is 35 and the other 70 miles above. Fords on this stream are essentially dangerous. Its waters are a mere mass of quicksand, rushing along with the velocity of a mountain stream. In fording our cattle they sink right down into the sand, and the farther they sink the faster they sink, while the current is so swift that even ferriage is attended with some hazard.
I had intended to write more freely, but we just learn that we can cross the river inst (inter, and so I close for the present.
Yours, &c.,
S. H. TAYLOR. [Watertown Chronicle, September 14, 1853]
Wood Creek, June 12, '53.
Friend Hadley I wrote you last Tuesday from the crossing of the Loup Fork but the men keeping a whisky supply at this point are gone and we shall probably see no one again going east until we reach Fort Laramie. We are now spending the Sabbath on Wood Creek, 170 and odd miles from Kanesville, and on what may well be called "the plains." We are on a flat, safely above the streams, of almost perfectly even surface and to appearance boundless in extent. It is the "Platte bot- toms." On the north, directly abreast, is to be seen, in a good atmosphere, a dim trace of highlands, fading away immediately at the right and left, so far away is it and at the south, three miles off, is the Platte, indicated by its dark cottonwood groves, and between them you look on in that direction, and there, as forward and back of us, the vast plain stretches away, we know not how far, for it is beyond the reach of our vision. Yesterday, at one time, our road was supposed to be 12 miles from the Platte, and yet, landward, the level flat extended probably 12 miles farther.
These flats are the great range on which the buffalo have ​
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herded for centuries. Their bleached bones are eveiy where but it is evident that they are slowly retreating before the whites. All the way to the Loupe, the remains were merely the most durable portions of the skeleton; this side of that stream we have seen many of those that perished last year. That stream, however, has been a great barrier to their pass- age eastward from their great crossings on the Platte, above here, and they have never been so abundant there. They are now seldom seen that side of the Loupe.
From the Loupe ferry, we kept the valley of that stream about 45 miles some of the way, for surface, soil, timber and water, as fine a country as is in the world. The flats are in places five miles wide. At 22 miles, where the bluffs ap- proach the river, we go about 3 miles through them, and emerge suddenly upon a great flat extending from the Loupe over to the Platte, 20 miles or over, and 10 miles or more in its other width, on which might be surveyed a square of more than 125,000 acres with hardly a depression or elevation suffi- cient to conceal a horse. The flats of the Loupe are fine for farming, and the stream is all the way where we saw it covered by cottonwood groves. Just before leaving the Loupe valley, we saw the first "alkali" though by testing it we concluded it to be the pure salt. At 45 miles we struck off south and south-west, thro' steep, barren, naked bluffs of clay and sand ; a day's drive, to the Platte bottoms, and another day brought us here. The crossing of the stream is bad, and there is all day a perfect jam and rush of people, teams and wagons ; but a sermon from one of our folks holds a part of them for an hour, and on they go again.
June 23. We have traveled less than 5Vfc days this week and made 1 19 miles, by our guide. We are where the cattle are seized by the infection of westward fever, and without urging go 20 to 26 miles a day. We are encamped near the Platte forks, by some famous springs, which, in this interminable region of "Platte water" and "slou' water," are really gloriously refreshing. There is no point from the Missouri to Fort ​
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Laramie, to which the emigrant looks with more earnest desire, nor, where he finds such a real heart-satisfying pleasure. By this time men's natural wants have become strong, and what- ever their habit may have been, the appetite for strong drink is overwhelmed by the desire for "good cold water." As the clear liquor comes up silvery and sparkling, rolling up the white, beautiful sand, and flowing off, to revive and refresh all the thousands that come, even the drinker forgets his whisky, and pays some passionate tribute to the "blessed good water." I sat down and sipped the water on the low bank, where Waldron and Stimpson sat and sipped it four years ago, and I presume thought about what they thought about. There are three graves here, and the inscriptions say the dead of them died in consequence of immoderate drinking of the water. When we reached the springs the mercury was at 112 in the shade, and the warning may have saved some of us.
The weather has been cool and comfortable until yesterday, and then it was about as hot as "the nature of things would admit of."
Since leaving Wood creek, we have passed over a great deal of alkaline land. The earth is wet and miry where the alkali is found in the water, and where the surface has been dried there is an incrustation of what appears to be saleratus. It is everywhere found in connection with salt.
We have passed over much beautiful bottom land during the week especially that lying along Wood, Buffalo and Elm creeks little streams tha thave almost their whole course in the flats. The timber of the Platte is now fast diminishing, and we traveled by the stream on Friday all day where it was almost naked of wood. It was only now and then that a tree or bush could be seen, indicating the course of the river. There is more just here, but it is all on the south side, and we can- not reach it. Buffalo chips are abundant, and for fuel we find them quite a passable substitute for wood. The timber that is here and for 40 miles back, is not worth counting in con- nection with the settlement of the country. Below that the ​
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groves are heavy and apparently fine. The Loupe also is well timbered along its immediate margin. They will both be settled 100 miles above their confluence, and a great com- munity will grow up there. Unless the Pacific railroad, or some other collateral influences interfere, there will be, in "our day," a city of 10,000 people at the mouth of the Loupe. In spite of that or anything else, a city will be there, and soon. Let the Indian title be extinguished and the Yankees get hold of the Platte, Elkhorn and Loupe Valleys, and there will be from the Missouri up, a mighty state, second in moral power to but one in the north-west your own.
The alkali has an effect to injure the hoofs of our cattle to such an extent that they wear tender, and crack badly in the heel, and we have much trouble in consequence. Tell your readers who may hereafter come over these plains, to be pre- pared with little thin plates of iron for ox shoes, and flat headed nails to secure them ivithout fail.
July 3 We had hoped to be at Ft. Laramie that we might pass the 4th there to-morrow but the lameness of our cattle delayed us and we are fifteen miles short. I trust that to- morrow about when your folks are sitting down to their inde- pendence dinner, we shall be driving up to Ft. Laramie.
We have been troubled much by the lameness of our cattle. While the wet season has given us abundant forage, it has aggravated this serious evil. The wetness of the alkaline sur- face renders the principle more active and fatal, and the feet of our cattle have been subject to its influence until the hoof fails to answer the purpose of a hoof. In spite of close and constant care, one in seven of all our cattle has a hoof worn through, or a heel cracked deeply and badly. This is a great evil on the north side of the Platte. Oiling the hoof once or twice a week has been in ordinary seasons a very good pre- ventive, and it would be well for emigrants to be supplied with it for the purpose though this season it has failed of the end. We have used alcohol with a better result. Its effect is to harden the hoof and fortify it against wearing, every emigrant ​
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should be supplied with it. Few men are supplied with the means of using such remedies, and are obliged to resort to shoeing with leather, fastening with eight-ounce tacks a poor expedient but much better than nothing. It is remarkable that, to within about seventy-five miles of Ft. Laramie, the evil increased, and then the feet of the cattle begin to harden, and some are fitted to all the conditions of the road that is, supposing due diligence to be used in avoiding alkaline grounds. The Platte, through almost its entire course below here, at least, flows along the southern wall of its valley, and on that side there is no flat and of course no alkali. On this, the north side, the extent of surface occupied by it, is diminished by the increase of alluvial and detrital deposits. Two hundred miles below here, almost the entire surface is impregnated with alkali, while here perhaps two-thirds of it is covered by alluvion carried on by the stream, and by sand and clay washed down from the hills. The alkali is thus concealed otherwise it would render this route entirely impassable and uninhabitable, high up the stream, for even here, where it is found, the water is so strong as to be fatal and the earth covered with a crust of alkaline salts, resembling the purest saleratus.
I wish to give your readers the best general idea I can of this valley and its peculiarities, but I will wait for a better opportunity than I shall have on the road. When we get through, if in God's providence that event occurs, I shall try to give you a view of this country and of all through which we may pass. It is enough that the last 200 miles of our course has been, so far as wood is concerned, over a total, utter deso- lation. On this side the river, there is not a thing growing as high as a man's knees. Even this great stream sweeps along without a shadow cast upon its waters without a tree or bush to indicate its course. Even the "LINE TREE" has been cut down and burned. When we stood by its stump, on ground on which so many thousands have enjoyed its shade, we felt that the man who could destroy it was fit only for murder and ​
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arson. But the noble tree is gone, and there is now 200 miles without a shade.
From the Platte forks up to this point, the valley is narrow, from 2 to 6 miles wide, and more uneven, and deeper cut in the surface formation, the high lands being in some cases per- haps over 200 feet high. These are a mixture of clay and sand, and it is curious and interesting to see what freaks the water played here during the glacial period. The bluffs form the most striking feature in the country. They are the broken hills lying along the margin of the valley, more or less detached from the great mass of clay and sand that forms the upper and highest surface.
There are some grand bluffs just below here, on the south side of the river. About 60 miles below is the first deemed worthy of note on our guides court house bluff. At a dis- tance of 15 miles it presents a very fine appearance seeming like a great regular structure of brick with a low dome, but too massive and heavy in its form to be pleasing. At a view of 6 miles, our nearest point, it is unshapely and with a little feeling of disappointment you turn to those that stand out in finer proportions, farther up the stream. Chimney bluff, 10 miles ahead, is a tunnel shaped mass of clay, perhaps 170 feet high, of really fine shape, and its center being a shaft probably 60 feet high and seemingly not more than four feet in diam- eter. They are both entirely naked of vegetation and the rains are slowly washing them down. The gutters in the surface of the court house bluff, give to its walls, at a distance, the appearance of a great columnade, and the effect is so great that you almost look for human forms about it and among its columns. 20 miles still farther up is a bluff Scotts bluff the grandest object of the kind I ever saw. It is nearly divided but encloses a fine green area like a court, around which, except on the east, rises what seems like an imposing pile of regal buildings in the style of the earlier days of monarchy. It appears as if two immense structures had been raised in the infancy of architecture, and additions had been made showing ​
S. H. TAYLOR
the progress of the science and the advance of each age. It has no spires the shafts rising from its wings being like chimnies but one part is surmounted with a noble dome, and the other has what is more like a great castle rising above the whole mass. The wings are naked, like bare brick walls, but between them the sides seem a little sloping and are grassy, with the summits covered with scattering dwarf cedars, that, at the distance of our trail, look like men, and really appear like guardsmen looking at us as we pass. East and near it is a beautiful tower, apparently as perfect in its form as the hand of man could make it. It rises about 70 feet with a wall leaning slightly in the center, and then goes up at least 60 feet perpendicularly. In the center, and covering about half its sum- mit, rises a noble perfect dome. In the court there is another like this. They are about 160 feet high and 60 feet broad at the base. The main bluff is from 200 to 250 feet high. Court house bluff is probably about the same though some have made it as high as 400, and a book we have here calls it 800. These are mistakes. They are high enough, however, to be worth going far to see, and we have regretted very much that the river cuts off from us the privilege of visiting them.
Yours, &c.,
S. H. TAYLOR.
[Watertown Chronicle, August 10, 1853]
Fort Laramie, July 6, 1853.
Dear Mrs. Hadley Feeling that some of our friends in W. would like to hear from me, I improve a leisure moment in writing you.
You will recollect that we left home with a very sick babe. She began to mend from the first day of starting, and con- tinued to do until she, "with the rest of us," is now in the enjoyment of good health. We have had a fine traveling sea- son, although some mud to wade through ; and although there is a great deal of sameness in the face of the country we have traversed, yet I find it very interesting, and am not yet willing ​to return. I wish I could paint for you a picture that would not fade of the river, the bluffs, the flats and (by far the best part) the flowers—the most beautiful and splendid, the grandest specimens of the floral kingdom.—The cactus grows here in the greatest luxuriance, and many varieties. I wish I could send you a root of the pineapple cactus. I would attempt sending more of the dried flowers, but fear they will break to pieces so you cannot distinguish them. The graves of departed travelers are another interesting feature in this country. We have seen but four of "53"—three of their tenants were killed by lightning; another was a babe of fifteen days.
We had a very narrow escape from lightning a few days since, as our wagon was leaving camp some distance ahead of the train. The shock from the flash was so great as to almost prostrate our whole team of five yoke, causing every face to blanch and every heart to quake; but the danger was safely passed through, while a smaller object a few rods in our wake was shivered. The rain storms here are tremendous, and you may judge that our cloth house is poor protection.
The fort does not answer my expectations at all. From the distance at which I view it (two miles) it seems nothing more than a few log houses inclosed by a wooden picket fence. I cannot see the men at all. The buildings are on the flats, which gives them a mean appearance after viewing the grandest specimens of bluffs.
In the course of an hour we shall continue our route, soon to cross the Black Hills, which are seen in the distance. Yesterday we met a return train of Californians, by whom Mr. T. sent letters, which may reach you before this. They say that we have passed the worst part of our route, and we hope to find it so. We have had no sickness in our train as yet.
I can give you no idea of the number now en route for California and Oregon, but we have plenty of neighbors. Indians are very scarce, judging from our experience.
Saturday after we had encamped, more than forty wagons passed on our road and a goodly number was at the same time ​
138 S. H. TAYLOR
in sight on the opposite side of the river. A great many cattle and sheep are crossing the plains this season. Our company have lost one horse by accident, and one wagon sold two head of cattle on account of lameness ; the rest are in pretty good heart to continue our journey.
Hellen has dried a great many flowers, expecting to send them to her mates in W. and is very much disappointed that a letter will not hold them. I have scribbled thus far seated on the ground in my tent with a rather troublesome babe hanging to my lap Please excuse, and remember me to all inquirers.
Yours very sincerely,
CLARISSA E. TAYLOR.
[Watertown Chronicle, November 2, 1853]
July 17, 1853.
Friend Hadley We are now 150 miles, only, above Ft. Laramie, after about two weeks of hobbling along with lame cattle and rickety wagons. We all wonder very much that our friends who have been through, have not warned us of these two difficulties especially of the first. For near four week we have been compelled to make short drives of five to fifteen miles a day sometimes stopping entirely. We might have saved much had we known in the beginning what we know now though we have brought all our cattle through to this point, except two we sold to the traders. Some have lost much more than we have. Within 20 miles of Laramie are probably 25 establishments for trade with emigrants, and their principal traffic is in lame cattle. These traders have now probably in their hands over 1000 head, besides many that have recovered and been sold back to emigrants at from three to five hundred per cent, profit. The evil begins to show itself about 300 miles below Ft. Laramie ; at that point it is at the worst, and above there it stops entirely. From there up, our trouble is entirely with old cases. ​
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Large chested cattle, treading heavily on their fore feet those having soft hoofs those that haul or crowd in team, and those that in the yoke hurry or fret themselves are almost sure to become lame. Whatever may be effected by treatment, much more may be by the selection of proper cattle. No yoke of oxen, however valuable, should be brought on the route, unless they are true in the draught, and satisfied to do their part in the yoke and though I have succeeded perfectly with two the heaviest oxen in the train, and one of them a bull, and they working on the tongue, the worst place in the team, yet. knowing what I do, I would not trust such again for the worth of them.
In a previous letter I advised emigrants to prepare them- selves with iron shoes. We are not now so much in favor of them. We have found that above Laramie the hoof has hard- ened so that quite commonly it is out of the question to nail on a shoe. The friends of shoeing are now more in favor of having their oxen shod a hundred miles or so east of Kanes- ville, and depending upon other means to protect their cows. It may be the safest course, though it is generally thought that the foot would thus be unfitted for service after the shoe comes off. I believe, and I think our people are all satisfied from our experience, that a safe and perhaps perfectly sure remedy may be used. Several of our working oxen that became tender in the feet, we saved by wetting the bottom of the hoof with alcohol, or alcohol and camphor. With the free use of it, twice a day, oxen went through the Black Hills with feet that were tender and threatened to fail when they went in them. Every one treated with it, has recovered with- out becoming actually foot sore and some of them, too, even when kept constantly in the draught. I have such confidence in it that with two quarts for five or six yoke of oven and a dozen loose cattle, I would depend entirely upon it. A moc- casin of leather, rawhide is best, is much used, and if adopted when the foot is first tender, will generally save it, but it is quite a trouble and only defends the hoof while it is hardening, ​
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while the alcohol hardens it. It is of great use, in connection with spirits turpentine, or tar well heat in, to cure the heel crack.
An important thing in saving oxen, is to have light wagons, light loads and plenty of teams. Let the emigrant always bear this in mind. But a wagon should be good, of course the best. In passing through a dry region like this, every seam in woodwork opens. Few wagons go through here without becoming loose in the fellys and hubs, and producing much trouble. The timber should be of the best kind and perfectly seasoned, and put together by good workmen otherwise the wagon will fail, or cost more than it's worth to take it through.
July 24 We are now in the mountains about four days from the South Pass in the midst of poor feed, but enjoying a little more rain than for a month past.
We have heard nothing of symptoms of scurvy, fever or cholera, though a day back of us there was a death by moun- tain fever on the 4th of July. I have never known, anywhere, a time of such universal good health, as has prevailed this season from the Missouri to this point, on both sides of the Platte. The distance is 740 miles, the time eight weeks, and there has not been 30 deaths among 30,000 emigrants. We have heard of but about three cases of sickness, and have known of no deaths except as we have seen by the way perhaps six or eight graves of this year. A healthy season has had much to do with this state of things, but to a better habit of living is it to be attributed to a great extent. We see no such thing as living constantly on salt food, nor of exposure to conditions to which the system is unfitted. Everybody has milk, and most everybody has an abundance. One-fourth of the draught on the road is done by cows giving milk, a large share of the loose stock is the same and you would be sur- prised to see the extent to which milk enters into the living of emigrants. The impression that evening drawn milk of cows traveling in or out of the team is heated and unhealthy, is a mistake. Our cows are warm, of course, when they stop at ​
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night rather, they are so in our warmest weather but in a few minutes they become cool, and there is nothing in the ap- pearance or taste of the milk showing a disturbance of its natural condition. We all use it freely, and I believe per- fectly safely. Everybody has fruit, too, and I believe that has much to do with their immunity from disease. No emi- grant should come on this road without plenty of dried sour apples and cows giving milk. Their value is incalculable. It is remarkable that all are excessively fond of corn meal in every form in which it is cooked. Every one expresses satis- faction or regret as they happen to have it or not. The "corn starch" substitute is a failure, because it requires eggs to make it good. We think the milk, fruit and meal save us from the diseased anxiety for potatoes and vinegar, as it does from the necessity of using too much salt meat. We have also fresh meat now and then, which helps along our living very much. The swine has no representative on these plains so we get no new pork but the antelope and buffalo furnish us an excellent article of fresh beef. From a young buffalo killed by some neighbors the other day, we had steak we called fully equal to any we ever had in Watertown, though Watertown, in that respect, be not a whit behind the very chiefest of cities. The hard bread manufactured at St. Louis or Kanesville, and obtained at the latter place by emigrants, is bad always very bad. I believe nobody eats it except when unavoidable. We find we need but very little of such food, and it is about as well to go without as to use that. It is sometimes, though very seldom, needed, and I would advise emigrants to take very little of it. Flour is the staple ; it is always the most convenient and the best form of material for bread, except, perhaps, one day in fifteen, when hard bread is needed. Rice seems to be less relished on the road than at home I presume because we have not eggs to cook with it. The emigrant will find that anything usually cooked with eggs, is of little use on the road. ​
142 S. H. TAYLOR
If a man will bring- with him proper fishing tackle, he can get good catfish from the Missouri, Elkhorn, and Loupe, and the Platte as far up as fifty miles below Ft. Laramie. In the Missouri they catch multitudes going up from 50 to 90 Ibs. each. Though poorly supplied with tackle we caught a few fine catfish in the Loupe and Platte, and some dace in the small streams.
The patent wagon lock is thrown away by everybody who has it, and the simple chain substituted. A lock is indispen- sible, and the common chain is, I believe, universally pre- ferred.
That which I believe is pronounced the best form of stove, is that of the common plate stove, but level at top and bottom, with two holes over the furnace, draught under and over the oven, and flue in the end. 3 or 4 feet perpendicular draught is necessary. We see none such among the hundreds that are thrown away. A stove should be double where most exposed to heat say half the front end and bottom. At least one camp kettle should be taken besides a dripping pan, coffee kettle, two tin kettles, and frying pan.
The best form of tent is just that of the common house roof not more than 6 to 6 1 / X> feet high, and 10 feet wide, well secured with pins at the edges. With such a form we have found brace ropes and all such securities useless or nearly so. The three poles used with such a tent, may be made very light, and the whole be lighter, more convenient, and safer and better than any other form.
Great care should be used to have ox yokes and bows right every way right chains light but good, of right length, with good hooks, and a half dozen or so of good heavy false links will be found worth their weight in silver.
Wagon tire should be so bolted to the felly that it may be readily taken off. This is very important. When our tire becomes loose, we take it off, find an old stove by the way and cut it into strips, and put them on the rim of the wheel and set the tire over them. All the irons should be in the ​
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common form, because then if one breaks it is easy finding another with which to replace it.
Dry Sandy Creek, July 31.
We are 16 miles by the summit of the South Pass, actually descending towards the level of the common earth though descending very slowly indeed, and through a region of little feed and less water. We are 7640 feet above the level of the sea, our guide books say, and almost to the line of perpetual snow. The Wind River range of mountains, abutting on our right, loom out almost over our trail with their sides white with snow down almost to our level. The wind comes cold from them, and the moment the sun's heat is obstructed, the air feels like that of a winter day. We have passed over, perhaps, the highest point of unbroken surface on the conti- nent yet we should hardly be conscious of being in a high altitude, so gradual has been our ascent. But the remains of the last winter's now, here and there lingering on the northern hillsides and the abundance of mosses on their summits, the cold chilling air, and the difficulty of weak lungs to breathe when a little wearied, indicate our situation.
I have a word to say here in regard to traveling on the Sabbath the almost universal habit of this road. When we left home, we commenced the experiment of observing that day with accustomed strictness, and to this time have observed it against the practice of every train and the opinion of almost every man we have met. Our experience, though it be that of but a single train, has so convinced our company of the economy and expediency of resting on Sunday, that I think our irreligious men, if traveling by themselves, would from policy, do as we have done. We have been on the road six days less than four months a time sufficient to test whether our teams need such a rest, and whether the rest is given them at the expense of time. We supposed we should fall behind a little, and that we should have only a good conscience though that be enough certainly to console us as other trains left us but now, after 16 weeks of draught, and four weeks ​
144 S. H. TAYLOR
of it on the barren sage plains, our cattle are almost every one in good flesh and some of them good beef. I say only what all admit, that our teams are in better condition than those of any other train we can hear of on the road. For four weeks our oxen have been remarked by those who have seen them, for their good condition, while in every train near us, there are some failing from leanness, and quite a large share of them are so thin that we would not put them in our yokes. We are quite surprised at this difference especially that it should be so great. To-day a company that was to reach the summit of the Pass a fortnight ahead of us, is en- camped here, satisfied to stop with us over Sunday. A heavy drover, now going through the third time, is satisfied on the point and now lies by with us. A train composed of very prudent men, acquaintances of some of us, left Illinois one day ahead, traveling Sundays. The character of the men was a guaranty of the best management of their team, and it -was predicted that they would go through in ten to twenty days less time than we. At the Missouri they were a week ahead, having gained six days. Fifty miles above Laramie we found a note from them, and they were two days only in advance. Another train starting and traveling under similar circum- stances, has had to stop to recruit, and is now behind us. We have probably lost a far less per centage of cattle than any other company going over the road.
These are not the only good results of lying by on Sunday nor are they the most important. Our people have an oppor- tunity that otherwise they cannot possibly enjoy, for those attentions to personal cleanliness, necessary to a healthy con- dition of body and for the relaxation and rest required as much by their moral and physical constitutions. While travel- ing we are necessarily constantly exposed to the vexing, har- rassing influences, incident to the road, and which has done much to deprave and dehumanize those who have gone over it. We need relief from these causes. The patience cannot bear a constant, perpetual abrasion. Even with the healing influ​
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ences of religion upon us, we feel it. We feel that the mind cannot bear chafing all the time. And Monday morning we feel as we used to, refreshed for another week of toil on the road another week of the journey of life another week of the labor of self control, and of effort to make the most of the enjoyment of the social and domestic relations. I wish all who are to go over this road, might hear and believe what I say that it is no more strange that those who travel Sundays and thus neglect their moral necessities, should be prepared to abandon their sick and tumble their dead into holes in the ground, than that they should become indifferent to the neces- sities of their beasts and strew the trail with the carcasses of over-driven and over-beaten cattle.
One great cause of loss on this road, is, feeding on alkaline lands. Cattle should, in no case, be halted where there are alkaline salts on the surface. This is the great curse of the upper Platte, the Sweetwater, and all streams flowing through the great waste from the Summit west to the base of the Bear mountains. The low grounds are every where more or less covered with saleratus, and thousands feed and herd their cattle in it for three to four weeks of time. They have the alkaline principle constantly in their grass, and to some extent in their drink, and even the dust they inhale is impregnated with it. The system resists the poison more effectually than we ought to expect, for comparatively a small per centage die. Where 200,000 cattle have passed this season, there are, for 400 miles, from one to four carcasses to the mile and prob- ably one-half of this 200,000 are fed on the lime grounds and furnish nine-tenths of the dead. Grass can be every where found on the high land. It is in spots dry but nutritious thin and scanty but very hearty. Our oxen labor on a morn- ing's feeding of it, all day as well as on the low ground grass till 2 o'clock. We esteem it the best grass by great odds. It is not so convenient, and so 100,000 cattle, this year, are grazed on alkaline feed to be killed or injured for months to come. Crossing the plains again, I would not feed on the low ​
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grounds, after leaving Wood creek, 170 miles from Kanes- ville, unless when I found it utterly unavoidable.
Aug. 7 We are at the eastern base of the Bear mountains still in the region of sand, clay, gravel, drought and barren- ness. The west pass of the Oregon route, we found saved by a cut-off. The 46 miles without water, from the Big Sandy to the Green river, in the common route, the Sublett cut-off, is avoided by going down the former to where it is but 18 miles across. The "dry stretch" of 26 miles, from the Platte to a tributary of the Sweetwater, is also by going up the Platte, to about 13 miles. Our company is about determined to go to Rogue river valley to settle. We shall probably take the Brophy cut-off from the great Columbia river trail turning to the left at the great level of Bear river and going well to the head of the Humboldt, then down that stream to within 80 miles of its sink, and from there over the northern terminus of the Sierra Nevadas, at this kind [line?] a mere range of hills to Rogue river. We thus take a direct road, without mountain passes with abundance of feed, and no "horrors" but two "dry stretches" 25 miles each, and a horrible tribe of Indians in the Humboldt.
Speaking of Indians to this point the Pawnees are the only tribe to be feared, and they only for their proficiency in theft. The emigrant cannot too closely watch and guard his stock till he leaves the Loupe fork. The only safe course, so far, is to have every animal secured nights with a chain and lock, with a man by him with a revolver, and never allow him to go from the hand of the guard during the day. Beyond this there is no risk. From the Loupe there is no danger of the kind. The Sioux, Ottoes, Tapoos and Crows, are nobler In- dians than you have ever seen; and hating the Pawnees im- placably. Among all these tribes it is deemed a merit to kill a Pawnee in any place or in any way. They prosecute against them a war of extermination. They are above thefts. I was with them four days in the Black Hills, separated from the train, in search of an ox stolen by a white man, and I found ​
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them ever ready to give me the best place in the lodge, with the best buffalo robe and best buffalo meat. I would trust them to any extent. I have not heard of an animal ever hav- ing been stolen by an Indian between the Loupe fork and Bear river mountains, nor do I believe such a thing ever occurred. About the Bear river region were the diggers miserable robbers but now, with another tribe, by the agency of the small pox, they are nearly annihilated. They were a powerful band a year ago, but are now a disunited and wan- dering handful, hardly recognized as a tribe, and nearly harm- less even as thieves.
As additional advice to those who intend going over this road, they should make their calculations to live as nearly as possible as they do at home. The last place to get good whip- stocks is on the west side of the Des Moines. There are some, but not the best, on the east side of the Missouri, going up from Kanesville to the upper ferry. Opposite and about 60 rods above the present eastern landing of that ferry, on the west side of the Missouri, is a good place, and the best place to get good hickory for spare ox -bows three or four of which ought to be taken with every team. A man wants about three dozen common screws ; 2 papers 8 oz. and 10 oz. tacks ; 2 Ibs. shingle and 2 Ibs. 6d nails ; a saw, hammer, good axe, spade, %, % and inch augers with one handle, wrench, screw driver and two good pocket knives one being to lose on the way. So far, a gun is of little use except to fire off, clean out and load up again every three or four days. A family should be supplied with such medicines as they know how to use, especial- ly for such diseases as proceed from a neglected and dirty con- dition of the skin and overcharging of the bowels with Platte water sand, and colds taken by swimming the Platte for cattle and fuel ; and the best of remedies for murrain, alkali, over- flowing of the galls, hobnail and other ails of cattle and horses. There is an abundance of a purer and honester article of saler- atus in this country than can be got at factories, and a man may get more or less as he pleases at Kanesville. Salt for ​
148 S. H. TAYLOR
cattle is unnecessary after striking the Platte from that point, for some reason, they will not eat it. There are about ten ferries on the road the aggregate cost on each wagon is about $25 to $30 by all but two of which the Mississippi and Missouri we swam our cattle without difficulty. The loss of cattle on the road is just according to the care they have. The loss of sheep, some 15,000 to 20,000 of which are on the way, I am informed by the most judicious drivers to be not much less than 20 per cent., or one-fifth. If any one wishes to take hens, they can manage a half dozen or so with little trouble. There are some in our company, and they ride well, being let out at evening, and have laid nearly all the way. There is no trouble in taking a dog, unless a bad traveler, by seeing to it that he has water supplied to him on the "dry stretches." It is not well to take cows that will "come in" on the road; I have seen many such, and many young calves traveling, but there are great objections, to wit: Good butter cannot be made on the road, and such as we have is little cared for. A can holding 6 to 20 qts., keeps our sour milk and cream, and makes our butter by the motion of our wagon. Everything should be carried in tin cans and bags. Pickles, and, I pre- sume, pork, can be kept in cans while air tight. The flesh of poultry, "cooked down," is found an excellent article of food. The dried eggs were a failure with us. Tin ware should be substituted for earthen, and sheet for cast iron. Russia is the only sheet iron, that, in a stove, will last through. An excellent substitute for a stove when no baking is to be done, is a sheet of iron like a stove top, to be put over a fire hole in the ground, a common means of cooking, and one which the traveler soon learns to make and use. It is just as good as a stove for every purpose but baking. Every one needs flannel under clothing here. In regard to supplies of clothing for the future, every one is convinced that anything not needed for the road, costs a great deal more than it comes to. Take nothing for use after getting through excepting money, of course, tho' I can assure you, you will have much less of that than you ​
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expected, when you get there. No water should be used for drinking or cooking, nor allowed to cattle, unless in a running stream or containing insects ; otherwise it is probably alkaline. Every one ought to have too much sense to use water from the stinking holes dug by some foolish persons in the margins of "slews" and alkaline marshes. No poison water is found east of here, that I am aware of, except as the alkaline is called poison. We have seen one alkaline spring, on the upper Platte, but the alkali is too apparent to the taste to be danger- ous. To this point it is safe to use all running water, or that which contains the young of mosquitoes and frogs. The guide books are full and reliable in their information on this subject. A man wants a guide, of course, and the latest to be got. The "Mormon Guide" is the best as far as it goes. This, as every- thing the emigrant wants, is to be got at Kanesville.
I shall probably have no more opportunities to forward let- ters until I reach Rock City, 3 two months hence at least ; and I may not have one to send this though I hope for it, for we expect to be, until we leave the Humboldt, on a trail taken by some of the return travel from California and southern Oregon. If I have time, I will fill up. There are many things I wish to write, but must defer till I get through. I expect, if I live, to hail from Rock City, Oregon.
Yours, &c.,
S. H. TAYLOR.
[Watertown Chronicle, March 29, 1854]
Jacksonville, Oregon, Dec. 17, '53
Mr. Editor We arrived here in ithe Rogue River Valley Oct. 26th, just five, instead of four months out from Kanesville, in company with a train of 87 persons, 23 wagons, 334 head of cattle, 1700 sheep and 29 horses and mules all right save the "ordinary wear and tear" of wagons and teams, and some wear and tear of heart, especially for going hungry now and then, and eating poor dry beef for a fortnight on the road. We were so foolish as to join company with this great multitude at
3 Rock City was probably to be located at Table Rock, the ite of the Indian fight. ​
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Green River, 60 miles this side of the South Pass, and to come through with them, and dearly we paid for our folly. Our teams were broken down and we were delayed three weeks and over beyond the time we might have made. There was a great deal of suffering in the train in consequence of the delay- suffering providentially arrested by relief of flour from the valley, meeting us ten days out, near the Sierra Nevadas. We cannot express our obligations to this people for their gen- erosity. It is the noblest community I ever saw. Many had consumed their whole summer in a most sanguinary war of defence with the bloodiest horde of Indians on the continent; all the grain that could be destroyed by fire, had been con- sumed, and many of the dwellings of the settlers burned down ; business of all kinds was totally prostrated, and the famine of the past year threatened a continuance for a year to come; but as news reached the valley that emigrants were suffering on the road, a force of fifty rangers immediately volunteered for their defense against the Indians, and under their protec- tion a train of mules with three tons of flour, $1,000 worth was sent to their relief. The whole road to the Sierra Nevadas, and indeed for a hundred miles beyond, was thus effectually occupied and aid supplied as far as any necessity could be anticipated. Wherever the presence of Indians was suspected, there an efficient detachment of troops was posted and the closest watchfulness maintained ; whenever property was plun- dered from emigrants, the most vigorous efforts were made to recover it and when families were found destitute of bread, they were supplied at the lowest rates to those having money, and free to those having none. And twice after the first, during the emigrating season, provision trains under escort were sent out that there might be no possible failure of the abundance of their liberality. On account of the great dis- proportion of prices of labor and food, emigrants experience very great difficulty in getting through the first eight months of their residence here ; and no one can realize the intense in- terest felt in their condition by the citizens of the valley. Every ​
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facility within reach of the people is afforded them to obtain food and to find employment. There is a great deal of in- dustry in the valley, and the strangest mixture of economy and liberality I ever saw. With the evidences of friendliness, frankness and generosity a man every where meets, he can hardly believe the community to be composed of people from every part of the Union, a year ago all strangers to one an- other. Land here is good but not as good as that of Wis- consin generally. It is too gravelly. Much of it, especially that most effected by drouth, is quite naked. Generally it is about half covered with a short thick growth of very rich bunch grass that seems to spread some by grazing and may in places eventually form a close turf. A very little of the land on the streams, has grass that may be mown but the best of it is not what your farmers would call tolerable wild meadow On the southern slopes of the mountains grass, much of it clover, takes the place of timber, while the northern slopes are covered with pine, (mainly pitch pine) fir and yellow cedar the latter differing a little from your white cedar, and ap- proaching the famous red-wood, palo colerado, of Oregon and California. Much of the southern slopes, is grown up to a short stinted wild stage Freemont's artimesia a form of which covers "the plains" from Scott's Bluffs, below Laramie, to the Sierra Nevadas fit for neither fuel nor food for man or beast. There is soil everywhere. The rock is very seldom exposed. Now and then you see a wall of sand stone or hornblende running along the mountain side, but you see too that time is fast employed whittling them to earth.
The periodical drouth produces a necessity for irrigation on almost all soils, for the coarser products. Wheat, oats and barley all cereal grains do well. They mature before they suffer. Flax is indigenous on all good soils from the Bear river to the Pacific. There is no three months of dog days to make corn. The summer nights are too cool for it and the drouth a little too early. The early kinds are grown but with no great success. With wheat we can beat the world ​
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and perhaps with oats. With coarse vegetables the country does well. In fat cattle, it can't be beat. Now, at mid- winter, there are hundreds of cattle, as fat as your best stall fed, on the commons propagating, growing, fatting, with as little human care as the deer on the mountains. The animal grows through all the seasons, and at one year old is as heavy as in your country at two. An ox here is expected to weigh eight to eleven hundred, of course, and you see one yoke performing a labor that two of ours can hardly do. The wheat crop for the next harvest is yet, Dec. 17, but little of it in. They sow till March. The plowing of the season is now from a third to a half done. It commences with the rains late in Nov. and continues to the middle of Feb. or first of March. It requires four or five yoke of oxen to break with a plow cutting 14 inches. We have had now four freezing nights, all in suc- cession. It is called remarkably cold. Men complain of the cold as they do in your country when the mercury is 20 degrees below zero. Their houses are very open about open enough for comfortable summer houses and they expect to keep warm in them. The commerce of the country is carried on upon 'pack mules, and so mild are the winters that the "packers" expect to sleep and live in the open air in all seasons, even without tents. The highest point to which the mercury rose last summer was 112 degrees but the heat was not oppressive as it is in Wis- consin. The air is balmy from the effect of the sea, and one feels free about the chest in the highest heat of summer. In winter the temperature ranges in the neighborhood of zero to 14 degrees below seldom, perhaps never, freezing in the day time, and only now and then nights. Nobody thinks of such a thing as feeding cattle in the winter. You sometimes see a little stack of hay designed for a working team in time of emergency but this is not common. It is expected that teams will go right along through the winter, plowing and keeping fat on the new growth of grass which is now green and fine. The old Spanish trail and the present inland commercial route, is through this valley, from California to Oregon. Thousands ​
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of mules are employed on it. Trains are constantly passing. And this multitude, winter and summer, subsist solely on grass. Potatoes and other coarse products are secured when ripe without regard to seasons. The potatoes are not yet all dug though they ought to be. These things are secured against frost, by putting them into houses about as close as a good log house. The mildness of the winter is a very great ad- vantage to this country. The rains and fogs render it an unpleasant season, but far less than you in that country sup- pose. The rains came on this year about the middle of No- vember. It rained more than half the time for ten or twelve days, since that, for eighteen days, we have had two storms, and enough to keep the ground very wet that is all. This is the busy time of the year. Last summer and fall they had rains out of their season, and many suppose they may be looked for henceforth but I apprehend there is no good ground for such a hope. We met these rains on the road and they were called unprecedented. The wet weather is from the south westward brought by a tropical sea wind, I take it to be a diverted west- ern monsoon, ranging along the region of mountains forming the whole western coast couuntry of the continent, and it comes warm like a summer shower. We have no cold rain storms.
Hogs do but indifferently. If I were coming here again, I would bring two or three full blood grass breed pigs. On the clover they would do as well as the bears and cattle but those that subsist on roots and mast have a poor time of it. I should think the hogs of the valley were of Spanish stock but mean and miserable as they are, a pig is worth an ounce of gold. With such as they are the country will soon be supplied and a better breed be called for. The breed of cattle cannot be improved. Every thing of the kind becomes Durham in a year after it gets here. The Umpqua valley, between here and the Willamet, (pronounced Wil-/aw*-et) is said to be best for hogs. Hens may be obtained here for about $2.00 a pair. A family in our train took out a pair, with little trouble. I have ​
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seen no geese nor turkeys, and presume there are none in the valley. Surrounded by mountains as this valley is, it cannot, of course, be otherwise than well watered.
I can only say of the Rogue River what I have heard, that it is so large as to require ferries. On either side, down valleys three or four miles wide flow little creeks Bear, Bute, Evans, Antelope, &c from the mountains to the river. There are many little brooks that reach the creeks, and there you see every where small spring runs that in a little way lose themselves in the soil and by all of these is afforded an abundant means for irrigation. A few, very few, trout are in the creeks, and some salmon live to get up here from the sea, but so bruised and beaten about by the drift in the swift streams, that they are unfit to eat. Of game on the wooden slopes the deer are really "too numerous to mention." Back a few miles in the mountains, the black, brown and grizzly bears are abundant. The grizzly is one of the noblest animals in the world more powerful and more fearless than the tiger. There is a species of the American lion, and what is said to be a very fair repre- sentative of the hyena, in the mountains though I doubt whether the latter is vouched for by any very good authority. Myriads of wild geese and sand hill crains but their place of resort, so far as we know anything about it, is several lakes in the interior, some of which we pass in coming over from the Humboldt, and of which I may write more fully at another time. The grizzly is an animal of incredible strength. I have seen a cub, five months old, break up a bullock's leg in the joint, stripping away the muscles from the bone with his claws. But they can neither climb a tree nor run along a steep hill side, and so they are not very dangerous. The fiercer animals have never been known to descend into the valley. Small game is scarce. Wild fruit, except the apple, is rather abund- ant. Of that, no form is found save the tree a fine crab tree, but bearing only a very few small berries, half as large, per- haps, as a currant, and half as good. The grapes of this valley are abundant and superior. The domestic apple does remark​
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ably well. The native plurn grows on a dwarf bush, perhaps 10 to 18 inches high, and has the flavor of the peach. Apple trees for sitting are packed over from the Willamet and sold here for $1.00 each.
This valley is about 75 miles long and perhaps 8 wide, be- side the valleys of the creeks. The lower part of the vaBey, half of it, or thereabouts, is reserved for the present for the Indians. They attempted last summer to drive out the whites, and after a war of three months, during which about 40 white and 100 Indians were killed, peace was concluded by the sur- render of the best half of the valley to the whites. These Indians are a wild fierce tribe, of kin to the Diggers on the Humboldt, and about the lakes this side of there, and the Snakes of Snake river. They are degraded and cruel beyond measure. It is said that they murder for pastime. They will any of them shoot a man to get his hat. We saw the body of an emigrant that had been dragged from its grave, to be stripped, and left to the ravens. The whole country from the head of the Humboldt to this place, and indeed to the ocean, except the "desert," sixty miles, is infested by them to such an extent that no place is safe. I wrote you what we heard of the Humboldt Indians the Diggers of their extinction by the small pox. We found it partially so and no one comes over the plains without wishing it were so of all these tribes. At the western junction of the Bear river and Salt Lake roads, we heard of the war of the Utahs and Mormons, the particulars of which you probably had long ago. The opinion of the most intelligent men I saw who came that way, was, that the war was got up by the Mormons as a pretext for consolidating their military establishment and fortifying the passes to the city. Bad as the Utahs are, all who came that way agree that the Mormons are worse that they are more adept at theft and more reckless at robbery. Much trouble is yet to be experi- enced with that community. The cattle trains that came by Salt Lake sustained more loss within striking distance of that city than those by the Bear river road on the whole trip. ​
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The closest vigilance was insufficient to prevent the theft of cattle. The property of emigrants is probably no safer there than in the country of the Pawnee. I thought our road over the mountains by the Bear river was the worst possible, but I would advise those having any more than a small number of cattle, to come that way rather than run the hazards by Salt Lake. But I am digressing here. More of this anon.
The wood of the valley is mainly pitch pine, fir, cedar and burr oak. This pine cannot be split at all, and is too heavy for convenience heavier than water. It however makes our lumber, while a mammoth pine of the mountain summits, called the sugar pine, makes our shingles and the shakes with which frame houses are generally covered. Our rail timber is the cedar and fir. The oak is a short, tough, gnarled tree like your burr oak, used only for fuel. The poplar and poorer species of the elm flourish along the streams, and in many places every thing is covered with the grape vine. The yew tree grows here and there on the mountains and so does the laurel. The alder grows to a tree 18 inches in diameter but it is useless. There is a tree representing the butternut - but it has no fruit save a seed like that of the maple, and one called the mansimeter, a more splendid tree than you ever saw; the "misseltoe bough" too, rendering the oak classic with its associations. The maple, linn and hickory are unknown here though the hazel, a brittle thing in your country, by its singular toughness supplies the place of the latter for some purposes. The mapparel, the crookedest, ugliest and most obstinate bush you ever saw, forms the upland undergrowth.
The best informed men put the population of the valley at three to four thousand three to four hundred being in the village of Jacksonville and among them our old friend, Dr. E. H. Cleveland, of Watertown. He is the only old acquaintance I have seen except Mr. Warren, of Hartland, whom I met on the plains and who called on you at your place. The Doctor is doing well first rate and sends his respects to all who remember him. He has actually driven out all competition ​
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and is now doing all the business of the valley in the line of his profession. The Dr. is now enjoying as much of wealth and the confidence of the people as any many in the valley. There are few perhaps ten or twelve families in the vil- lage. The first time I was here I saw but one woman and she kept a bowling saloon and drunkery. Since that we have found a good society of families. The mass of the men "keep batch" the merchants in their stores, and mechanics in their shops even the Justice of the Peace, with several miners, cooks, eats and sleeps in "the office," a circular mosque-like building, made of "shakes," I believe without a board or pane of glass about it. The houses, except one, the Robinson House, are all made of these things, and are generally lighted by the crevices or windows of cotton cloth. The first successful schools in the valley are just started by persons of our com- pany, are in Jacksonville to be the basis of an academy and one in the country. The first religious societies three Metho- dist are now being organized, with five clergymen, of the same denomination, all of our company, in the field. The most flourishing branches of business are those of the bowling sa- loon, the gambling den and the drunkery and yet there is less of gambling and drinking in the place than you would expect to see. Merchants and mechanics are doing well. There is no cooper, gunsmith, carriage maker nor shoemaker doing busi- ness in the place though by another year, they might all, save the latter succeed well. We have but one saw mill in the val- ley though three more, at least, are commenced, and a grist mill is to be ready for the next harvest.
We find it very difficult to become familiarized to the enor- mous prices in this country. Flour, this winter, ranges from 20c to 25c a pound, beef is 20c and 25c, bacon, mess 37c, prime 45c, potatoes 6c, squashes Sic., 4c a pound. Salt is 25c a pound, candles 75calOOc, coffee 37c, sugar 33c. butter $1.25, milk lOOc a gallon. While domestic staple products, it will be seen, bear from five to ten prices, labor bears but two to four as, per day, $2.00a$3.00; per month, $50.00a$75.00. This renders ​
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it extremely difficult for emigrants to subsist the first few months. Some of our folks say they never before found "exist- ence so much a problem." Some of them, men heretofore well to do in the world, have dug potatoes for every 3Oth bushel; some have worked for $2.00 a day, with board, and paid $4.80 a bushel for potatoes the price when we came. I sold a good log chain for five squashes. A neighbor sold a good wagon for 100 hills of potatoes, and got the worth of the wagon, $80,00, and I sold one for 100 Ibs. of flour and 750 Ibs. or \2*/2 bushels potatoes. Oxen are worth, by the yoke, but $100 to $160 and cows from $75 to $100 each. The diffi- culty of obtaining food is increased 100 per cent by the vora- cious wolfish appetites of all new comers. People eat till they are themselves astonished, and oftener thus than till they are satisfied. I presume four-fifths of those who have been here but three months, experience great trouble in getting enough to eat. It is a hard thing to say of the country, but it is true ; and tell your readers if they do not wish to realize it, to stay at home. When a man gets to raising and selling agricultural products, or becomes established in any other business -the profits of which are three or four times the profits of labor, he can prosper but not till then. That is too true. And you can tell them that if people were not made over, or rather half unmade, by the dehumanising processes through which they go from Kanesville here, they would never submit to the con- ditions of this country. They would never submit to living in such houses, with such an absence of the conveniences and comforts of eastern life, and such a destitution of intellectual and moral opportunities, if they had not already learned on the plains to submit to anything. You can tell them that too ; and tell them they can never, in living here, get paid for corning over the plains. I am not homesick; I am not prejudiced; I only tell you facts. And it is in fulfillment of a pledge to many of your readers, to tell them facts, that I telJ them much more than half of those, in this country of mild winters, of a fruitful soil and mines of gleaming gold, are dissatisfied and ​
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regret having come here. Of those who have cpme wijJiput their friends, I have heard not one express an intention to bring them here. The general expression of Hich is, "I am glad my family are not here:" while the ma*s of those who stay, stay for otler reasons than because they l&e the country. We are all told that by another year or so we shall preler it to the East. I know not how that may be : but I know that a large portion of those who have been here eighteen months, the time of the settlement, iaUnd to leave.
Mining is being perhaps fairly paid now. Some are making fortunes and some making nothing, or less. There is room for many thousand miners in this valley. The gold, in tome *|uan- tiiy, is exhaustless. And the farther explorations are carried in every direction from MS, the more extensive the gold hearing country is found. New diggings are discovered somewhere every day. There is gold enough more jthan -can be washed out. And yet mining is a very precarious business. I would advise no one to come here to mine, because he is very likely to expend years of labor without profits and v.ery sure to get less gold than will repay him for what he undergoes in coming and living a miner's life. It is worth something to "see the elephant/' and well enough, perhaps, at least for a young man, to waste two years in learning the lesson of a trip to, and a residence in this country ; and it is "well enough" for them only, as young men are bound to fool away about so much time, and there is no school in which they can learn as fast, or by the discipline of which truths will be so indelibly impressed on their memories. I will write again soon.
My respects to all accept assurances &c. of Yours, S. H. TAYLOR.
[Watertown Chronicle, April 5, 1854]
Jacksonville, O. T. t Jan. 17, '54.
Dear Sir I write to advise you of the occurrence of a new and probably a serious difficulty with the Indians. On the ​
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13th inst. a force of about 30 whites, near the Cottonwood, about 40 miles from here, on the road south to California, in the Chastee valley, went out in pursuit of Indians who had for some weeks been engaged in the the theft of cattle. They had traced them into the mountains to a cave, when they were attacked by about 100 Indians from an ambush, and dispersed with the loss of their rations and ammunition having four men killed and four seriously wounded. The attack was well sustained by the whites, in a fight continuing in one form or another, all day. The loss of the enemy is unknown.
The Indians are of the Shastee and Rogue river Tribes a portion from a band located but about nine miles from here. It is generally treated as a prelude to certain war. A Capt. Wright, a famous Indian hunter, of this valley, has gone to the scene of the affair, and at Yreka and Cottonwood is raising a volunteer company to pursue them. It was intended to have 200 regular troops stationed in this valley before this time but they are not here, and no one knows when they may be. But regulars or no regulars, should these tribes renew hostili- ties, the citizens will make short work with them. -I will advise you of the progress of the affair.
Yours, &c. S. H. TAYLOR.