The gold seekers were now in buffalo country. To the north and to the south lay the great buffalo pastures. Down the middle ran the river, like a gigantic watering trough, its banks pockmarked with mud wallows. Buffalo skulls were scattered everywhere. The emigrant road itself was furrowed with buffalo trails. The trails were almost uniformly fifteen inces wide by four inches deep, remnants left by the shaggy beasts which often came single file out of the sand hills to drink from the Platte.
Even though the signs were there the buffalo were not. The universal complaint of the emigrants in the spring of 1860 was succintly summed up by Dr. C. M. Clark: "...few buffalo were to be seen during our passage out." William Hedges did remember a couple of buffalo that were killed a short distance ahead of his party near the trail: "We got a little of the meat but the carcasses were stripped before we came to them, and what we got was off the neck, and this, our first taste of buffalo meat, was awfully tough." Irving Howbert, then a boy of fourteen, became so frightened on seeing a wounded bull that he raced for camp, not even pausing to remove his boots when he reached the river. Commenting on the incident many years later, he wrote:
"This was the only buffalo I saw the entire trip, but hunters told us that they were plentiful a few miles back from the river, having been frightened away by the crowds of people overrunning the valley."
By mid-summer the buffalo were once again crossing the Platte River. When first he saw them - towards the end of July - John D. Young was returning from the goldfields and had reached a point some seventy miles west of Fort Kearney. He wrote:
"We heard a low rumbling noise like distant thunder. Then a great cloud of dust arose increasing every moment in extent and reaching up to the clouds...The cloud of dust suddenly cleared away and we saw an immense herd of buffalo only about a quarter of a mile distant...Stretched miles and miles away far as the eye could reach was one compact solid body moving in one direction and making the earth shake beneath them. They were traveling parallel with the road .... "
For three days John D. Young and his party passed through the herd. Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, there was "a general movement of the herd towards the south" and soon only a few stragglers remained, these striving to follow the course of the main herd.
Alexander T. Rankin ran into what was probably the same herd on 26 July 1860. He was aboard the C.O.C.P.P. Express, traveling from St. Joseph to Denver City. North from Marysville it became almost impossible "...to drive the Buffalo out of the road so the stage could pass; the mules took fright & ran away some time before they could be stopped.” At length the driver refused to go on, necessitating a night's stopover at Thirty-two Mile Creek. In a letter to his wife on the last day of July, Alexander Rankin tried to estimate the size of the herd:
"If I were to say there were a million you would think I was romancing. Perhaps there were five. I can only conjecture the number. They were crossing the road all night and all the next morning for a distance of 25 miles...."
If the buffalo made an on-again, off-again appearance along the emigrant road in 1860, the presence of the Indian was everywhere apparent. In early April, Edward J. Lewis found seven lodges of Sioux at O'Fallon's Bluffs. "Camp swarming with Indians," he wrote, "rather troublesome." At the Lower Crossing, just south of California Hill, he noticed nine lodges of Sioux.
Late in May of 1860 George T. Clark camped near a Cheyenne village some miles below the Upper Crossing at Julesburg. The warriors were preparing for war against the Pawnee. That night a great many of the squaws came to Clark's tent to "swap heap." Further along the road, at Fremont's Orchard, Helen Clark came upon a large group of Cheyenne with their dogs and ponies and "...one old squaw 80 years old, she laughs at my bloomers." To many of the goldseekers these Indians appeared little better than beggars and thieves. On passing one exceptionally dirty Indian village, Mollie Sanford was led to comment: "The creatures looked too filthy to live. They are dreadful beggars, and if they cannot get what they ask for, will steal." Dr. C.M. Clark remembered how the Indians came flocking around him with their invariable greeting of "how! how!" and asking for 'baccy and sucre. He saw them as insufferable beggars, who seldom went away satisfied. At O’Fallon's Bluffs he met with a small encampment of Sioux. Of these he wrote:
“...during our stay here we received frequent visits from them, which was anything but agreeable. They would come and sit down around our tent sans ceremonie, produce their pipe, light it, and commence smoking...while the young boys would saunter around camp, poking their dirty digitals and noses into pots and pans, looking for something to eat, and we had to keep a strict watch over their movements, for they are great pilferers."
If this attitude of White towards Red was condescending at best, it was nonetheless tempered at times with an element of fear. The Indian uprisings that would bloodly the trail in the mid-sixties were as yet beyond anyone's comprehension. Even so, the campgrounds seemed always alive with rumors of multilated bodies, of captive women, of Indian massacres on the road ahead. Most of the Indian depredations in 1860, however, amounted to no more than bold attempts to run off the emigrant livestock. George T. Clark, after passing an Indian village near O'Fallon's Bluffs, noted reports that "...some men camped'near the Bluffs lost all their horses last night from a stampede made by the Indians." Mollie Sanford wrote about a similar incident at Fremont's Orchard: "A band of Indians rushed into our camp today and stampeded our cattle. They were either drunk or bent on mischief."
Perhaps the nearest thing to an authentic Indian attack along the Denver Road in 1860 happened to John D. Young and company. On reaching Beaver Creek in late May all but Young had voted to take the newly-opened cutoff through Cheyenne country, thus saving sixty miles over the old road along the South Platte. On their first day out they were surrounded by "multitudes of warriors." As John D. Young recalled it:
"On they came rushing at a gallop up to our very wagons. We then presented our rifles and they suddenly wheeled and turned away out of range of our bullets There they stood deliberating whether they should make an attack and there we stood fifty men opposed to more than a thousand of those wild devils, the 'Comanche' of Kansas .... "
The Cheyenne followed Young's party until night camp was made, then vanished into the darkness. The next day the goldseekers met with a band of friendly Arapahoe and "traded some with them."
Indians were not the only danger along the road in 1860. Dysentery, typhoid, rabies, storms, accidents, all stalked the emigrant camps, leaving graves to mark their visits. Lavinia Porter noticed the presence of death everywhere along the Platte: "We passed hundreds of new-made graves on this part of the route. One would imagine that an epidemic had broken out among those preceding us, so frequent were these tell-tale mounds of earth."
Several emigrant deaths were listed in the 1860 Census of
Nebraska Territory. Forty-year-old John Scott of Iowa died after being
sick for a week with dysentery. Thomas Rice, thirty-five, was
accidentally shot to death; he was buried just past Cottonwood Springs.
Edward J. Lewis came upon the grave on 5 April: "Grave here of Mr. Rice
of Niles, Michigan accidentally shot a few days ago in hunting." Two
months later Helen Clark and her mother took a walk up the hill to the
Rice grave and read the marker. "I picked two beautiful white flowers
off the grave," she wrote. "I pressed them in a book." There were three
other graves nearby, none of them marked. Further along the road Helen
Clark found the grave of G.H. Hopkins of Dubuque, Iowa. He had died on
June 7 near Bijou Creek where the new cutoff turned southwestward to
Denver City.
H.J. Hawley and his companions sat out the storm at O'Fallon's
Bluffs. When they were finally able to press onward on May 9 Hawley
noticed many stranded wagons "without any cattle or horses as they had
all ran away." He added by way of footnote: "A Gent just informed us
that a man was frozen to death in the big snow storm while hunting his
team." That same day Jonah Cisne saw three men digging the frozen man's
grave one mile east of Fremont's Slough. "He was an emigrant from Cass
County, Iowa," Cisne wrote, "his name was Painter, 19 years old, had no
relations along." When Helen Clark came upon the grave on 2 June she
remembered it as in the most beautiful spot "that nature ever made for
such a purpose."
On 5 June another killer storm overtook Mollie Sanford and her
husband just past Fremont Springs. It was a terrible storm of rain and
wind, with the worst thunder and lightning that Mollie had ever seen.
When it was over, and the family once more on the road, a fresh grave
was passed. "A poor fellow was killed by lightning,"Mollie wrote,
"wagon and contents burnt. Someone had hurriedly scooped a hole and put
him in. By the grave his charred hat, and the body of his dog lay...."
This poor unfortunate was almost certainly A.S. Dow, listed in the 1860
census as a married emigrant of fifty from New Hampshire, who sometime
in June was killed by lightning in Shorter County.
Storms such as these appear to have rolled up and down the
Platte River valley all through the month of May. During the first week
of the month William Hedges and company were nearing the Platte River
on the Nebraska City Road when they were pounded by a furious storm of
hail "varying from the size of walnuts to almost as large as goose
eggs."
On 19 May George T. Clark, then in the vicinity of Willow
Island, witnessed a severe thunderstorm with "drops as big as a
teacup." On 21 May Helen Clark ran into a pouring rain just below Grand
Island. One week later, on 28 May, a particularly severe storm of wind,
rain and hail struck emigrants all along the road from Fort Kearney to
Beaver Creek.
All this moisture, unleashed along the Platte River in late
spring, would have been more than welcome along the old Santa Fe to the
south. Almost the entire territory of Kansas was in the grip of a
severe drought. On 16 May 1860 the Rocky Mountain News carried an
article describing the seriousness of the situation; it was a reprint
from the 2 May edition of the Hannibal Messenqer:
The extreme dryness continued into the summer. When John D.
Young returned in early August he was told that the St. Joseph Road had
received no moisture for seven weeks. He remembered the scene well:
"The grass was burned yellow and the ground parched up...Farmers were
greatly alarmed for their crops...Their stock was dying in great
numbers."
The drought of 1860, which extended westward through Kansas
Territory along the Santa Fe and Smoky Hill trails, helps to explain
why most of the goldseekers that year chose to travel the route with
the better grass - the northern route along the Platte to the
mountains. Irving Howert, remembering later the almost continuous
procession of white canvassed wagons across Nebraska, agreed with the
estimate that "from sixty to seventy thousand people went to the Rocky
Mountains during the summer of 1860, more than ninety-five percent of
whom traveled by way of the Platte River."
The emigration of 1860 was immense by everyone's observation.
On 16 May the Rocky Mountain News reported from Cherry Creek: "The
emigration is pouring in at the rate of over 500 men each day and
increasing daily." On 23 May a Mr. Hinckly, who had arrived by the
previous Saturday's Express, was quoted in the News as saying that "at
Plum Creek he was told that 500 wagons had passed the day before, and
that, 11,000 wagons had passed this spring prior to the first of May."
On 20 June Wilk Defrees reported to the News that on his trip from
Denver to Fort Kearney he had met 4,925 teams. At an average of five
persons to a wagon, he figured the total to be at least 24,625
emigrants. He also noted: "I think we must have met from eight to ten
hundred ladies on the route, most of whom were ladies accompanying
their husbands for the purpose of permanent settlement."
The presence of women was something entirely new along the road
to Denver City. 1859 had been a 'men only' year, so much so that many
goldseekers on their return to the States spoke of wanting to hug the
first woman they met, be she pretty or not. By 1860, however, the
emigrants began to notice "whole families of women and children." Many
of the Fifty-niners, who had hastened back home the previous fall, had
obviously decided to return in the spring with the wife and kids.
John D. Young was rather indignant at these men for bringing
their families, reasoning that the hardships of the road were sometimes
more than a man could bear, "...but women and children were not fit for
it and I think it was a most barbarous thing to bring them on the road
at all." Albert D. Richardson, on the other hand, found the women
bearng up remarkably well. "Many emigrant women rode saddle horses,
though most were in ox-wagons," he wrote. "All seemed to enjoy the
trip, though each invariably apologized for her untidy looks." One
woman in particular struck his fancy: "We saw one bloomer who weighed
two hundred and fifty pounds driving oxen while her husband slept
soundly in the wagon."
The numerous family groups seem to have a stabilizing influence
on the entire emigration in 1860. The wild scramble of 1859 was
replaced by a more steady progression. Most everyone was better
prepared. There were fewer hand carts, fewer walkers, fewer packers
ending their journey out of supplies. The goldseekers were in the main
so well provisioned that Libeus Barney, who had wintered over in Denver
City, felt obliged to complain in a July 9th letter to the Bennington,
Vermont Banner:
Not all the goldseekers were this well prepared. Dr. C.M. Clark
remembered seeing one 83-year-old man on the road north from St.
Joseph. All he had along was an uncovered cart, drawn by a pair of
acient looking bullocks. When the Clark party overtook this old
veteran near the cutoff "he had three passengers aboard his cart,
and was making slow progress, owing to his rheumatiz and the
tender feet of his team." Further to the east, near Beaver Creek,
Mollie Sanford fed "a poor forlorn pilgrim" who wandered into her
camp one evening. He gulped down three quarts of milk.
"There were others enroute," according to Dr. Clark, "who
were literally traveling on their muscle, dragging hand-carts, rolling
barrows, or packing themselves." The good doctor came to appreciate
some of the problems encountered by these walkers when he himself was
forced by the jaded condition of the team to give up his seat in the
wagon and trudge through the deep sand along the South Platte. He
quickly exchanged his heavy boots for moccasins. He saw others "so lame
that it was almost impossible to walk, huge blisters would form on the
heels...Others again, who possessed a rheumatic diathesis, would often
awake in the morning with rigid and sore muscles, scarcely able to
walk, and they were often seen hobbling through the sand, with the aid
of a stick, or hanging on the back end of the wagon."
Perhaps the most famous of all the walkers of 1860 was the woman
written of in the 2 May edition of the Rocky Mountain News:
Once upon the South Platte Road the goldseekers began to meet many
already on their way back to the States. "Some were returning for their
families," wrote Mollie Sanford, "while others were shaking the dust of
Denver from their feet, and cursing the place and the people." Just
west of the Upper Crossing an old fellow came into Mollie's camp one
evening, looked up at the women present and remarked: "My dear wimmin,
you'll rue to your dyin' day ever havin' set your feet on that thar
miserable Pike's Peak."
To the east of the Upper Crossing in late May George T. Clark
met twenty-five teams returning from the Peak. All reported that it was
"not worth going out for gold." Dr. C. M. Clark also remembered meeting
a great many stampeders near Julesburg. Some reported that "the Peak
had broken off." Others, with a pitying glance, added "that ar quartz
mill of yours' no account, 'twont sell for old iron."
The rumors and hard-luck stories spread by these returnees seem to
have had little effect on the emigration of 1860. To the contrary, the
stampeders were often looked upon with contempt. Dr. C.M. Clark
remembered his party pointing the finger of scorn at them, asking "if
they were going home tosee their 'mammas.'"
Unlike the Fifty-Niners, the goldseekers of 1860 seemed to have
grown somewhat in sophistication. Most seemed to realize that gold in
the new E1 Dorado could not be scooped off the ground; the pick and the
pan might provide a little color, but most of the gold lay locked up in
rock and could be freed only with the help of machinery. To answer this
need quartz crushers would have to be shipped west to the mountains.
John D. Young met such a train of "twenty wagons loaded with a crusher
and machinery steam engine boiler etc." The crusher brought west by
Samuel Mallory was but one of more than 150 that had left the
Leavenworth-St. Joseph area by June 1. John D. Young, on his return
east in early July, Counted forty-one quartz crushers on the road
between Denver City and Fort Kearney.
Also on the river road were the big government freight wagons
moving slowly westward towards Camp Floyd and Carson Valley. These were
immense affairs, usually drawn by eight or ten yoke of oxen and
accompanied by a reserve herd of cattle driven along near the train. To
William Hedges the appearance of such a train in the distance reminded
him of "a line of white elephants lumbering along." Independent
freighters were on the road as well, bringing supplies to the Denver
City merchants. Their wagons were smaller, their working oxen but four
to six yoke. So common was the sight of these freighting wagons and the
bullwhackers who guided them that the journalists of 1860 came to
consider freighting as much a part of the trail lore as the goldseekers
themselves.
The crowds pushing on to the mountains reminded John D. Young
of "one continuous string uniting civilization with the wilderness."
Altogether, it was a tremendous tide of humanity - freighters,
bullwhackers, packers, solitary footmen, emigrants and goldseekers,
sunburned women and dirt-stained children, plodding pilgrims all.
By the time they had reached Beaver Creek the end of their individual
odysseys was already in sight. The mountains began to appear like faint
clouds on the horizon, first Long's Peak to the west, then the
sugarloaf outlines of Pike's Peak off to the southwest, finally the
great blue barrier of the front range itself. At the base of the
mountains lay Denver City, queen city of the plains, gateway to the
land of gold and golgotha, of fame and fortune, of ruined health and
shattered dreams.
The end of the journey meant a new beginning for each of
the journalists of 1860:
Lavinia Porter and her husband stayed only a few days in
the Denver City area. Astounded by the general lawlessness of the
goldseekers, they decided to continue on to California. Lavinia's
brother, Sam, stayed behind to try his hand at prospecting for gold.
Mollie Dorsey Sanford and her husband mined for a time at
Gold Hill above Boulder. When the Civil War broke out Byron joined
the Colorado Volunteers, and Mollie followed his regiment up and
down the front range to further adventures in the west.
Helen E. Clark settled in with her father and brother at
their ranch outside of Denver City. The ranch also served for a
time as one of the stage stops on the main road to Tarryall.
George T. Clark became mayor of Denver in 1865. Later he
engaged in banking at Central City amd Georgetown.
Irving Howbert and his father settled in the Pike's Peak
region.
Jonah G. Cisne was moderately successful at mining. He
stayed in the mountains until December, 1863. On several occasions
he sent home small amounts of gold dust by way of the C.O.C.P.P.
Express.
Others were not so blessed. Both Dr. Charles M. Clark and
John D. Young returned to Chicago with less money than when they had
set out. Edward J. Lewis left the goldfields on 20 August 1860; when
he reached Bloomington, Illinois a month later he had only five
cents left in his pocket. William H. Hedges, with a friend named
Charley, managed to thumb a ride back east in the returning wagon of
John Morrison. When Morrison turned off at Omaha the two scraped
together enough gold dust to purchase passage on the eastbound
stage, arriving home in Sidney, Iowa, in a completely 'busted'
condition.
2."Diary of a Pike's Peak Gold Seeker in 1860," by Edward J. Lewis. Colorado Magazine XIV (November, 1937).
3. "Journal," by George T. Clark. The Trail, VI (June, 1913).
4. Two Diaries (one the 1860 diary of Helen E. Clark). Denver Public Library, 1962.
5. (H.J.) "Hawley's Diary of his Trip Across the Plains in 1860," The Wisconsin Magazine of History, XIX (March, 1936).
6. John D. Young and the Colorado Gold Rush, edited by Dwight L. Smith (Chicago: Lakeside Classics, 1969).
7. "Across the Plains and in Nevada City," by Jonah G. Cisne, Colorado Magazine XXVII (January, 1950)
8. By Ox Team to California, by Lavinia Porter, (Oakland: Oakland Enquirer Publishing Co., 1910).
9. Mollie, the Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories 1857-1866, edited by Daniel F. Danker (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1959).
10. The Look of the West, 1860, by Richard Burton (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963). 11.
11. Diary by W.D. Anthony (Denver: Manuscript Files, Library of the State Historical Society of Colorado).
12. Pike's Peak...or Busted!, by William H. Hedges. (Evanston, Illinois: The Branding Iron Press, 1954).
One of these mounds proved an unsettling experience for John D. Young on his return from the goldfields in July of 1860. Of this experience he later wrote:
"One night we camped after dark. In fixing the
horses I stumbled several times over a little mound of earth.
In the morning I was shocked to find out we had been
sleeping on a grave We slept quiet and undisturbed during
the night but if we knew of the lonely sleeper beneath us
we would have left the place in a hurry. Thousands of little
mounds like this dot the road on either side from the Missouri
River to the Rocky Mountains, marking the last resting place
of the adventurous gold seeker "
"On the 7th the day was pleasant with showers in
some places but travel was kept up by most trains. At night one of the
most terrible storms ever known in the Platte Valley, set in, and
continued throughout the night. Cattle stampeded, were driven before
the storm, and in many instances entirely lost. Herdsmen who were on
guard in some cases attempted to follow their herds, were lost and
several frozen... Near Fremont's springs the snow fell near a foot in
depth and the 8th was exceedingly cold with driving wind and drifting
snow from the north."
"The weather is becoming fearfully dry throughout
the western country... No rain of any consequence has fallen at St.
Joseph since last winter. The wells and cisterns have nearly all dried
up, and the Missouri river looks as though it might follow suit. The
leaves on trees, too, are stunted, and not more than one-fourth their
usual size, at this season. Nor does the drought stop here, but extends
throughout Kansas and Nebraska and to Fort Benton in the Rocky
Mountains."
"This season has brought but few miners that
benefit our town further than the strengthening of hope &
confidence among us. They come into town with from six months' to
a years' provisions,and all the necessary outfit for the business
of mining; and if they stop at all here, they encamp a short
distance from town and live among themselves... They have no
occasion to visit hotels for they have house, board and lodging,
of their own...If they stop at a saloon it is only to get a glass
of water .... "
"The woman who crossed the plains on foot and alone, of
whom we have heard so much during our jouney up the Platte, arrived in
this city on Thursday last. She says her destination is the head of the
Platte, and that it takes its source in a great lake. Persons who
passed her on the road say that when asked to ride, her reply was: 'Its
no use, I would have to come back and walk the road all over again.'
She evidently imagines that she is making a necessary
pilgrimage."
Copyright © 1999-2008 Richard Gehling. All Rights Reserved.
E-mail me at GehlingR@aol.com.