Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 44/The Wagon Train of 1843-Its Dual Significance
THE WAGON TRAIN OF 1843
ITS DUAL SIGNIFICANCE
S. B. L. PENROSE
THE DREAM OF CHAMPOEG was realized the year after the wagon train of 1843 had reached the Willamette Valley. It might never have been realized if that famous emigration had not brought into the country about 900 Americans, men, women and children, at a time when there were probably not more than 400 white persons, both British and American, in the whole vast region west of the Rocky Mountains between the northern boundary of California, and the southern boundary of Russian America.
The movement to establish a provisional government in an unsettled territory seems to us so natural and reasonable that we do not appreciate the difficulty of the problem which con fronted the men of Champoeg. It was not the problem which six years later confronted the settlers of California, for the title to that region had passed to the United States by cession from Mexico and a provisional government organized there would be under the protection of the United States, no matter how long congressional recognition might be delayed. In Oregon, how ever, the formation of a provisional government for the protection of property and the maintenance of law and order could not depend on protection from the national government, be cause the title to the region had not yet been determined. The movement which began at Champoeg, therefore, was daring and hazardous, for no one knew in May, 1843, whether the title would ultimately be vested in the United States or in Great Britain. The organization of the provisional government in Oregon was accordingly a novel venture in self-government by people not assured of national backing and support. Some of the Americans thought that the undertaking was in advisable or premature. Even some of the new arrivals were for a time doubtful as to its advisability. However, the overwhelming preponderance of Americans over the British after the arrival of the wagon train of 1843 changed this situation com-
pletely and gave confidence to the advocates of immediate action. A provisional government was finally organized in 1844 and the Hudson's Bay Company, recognizing the change of affairs, decided the following year to transfer its central office in the Northwest from Fort Vancouver to Victoria on Vancouver Island.
In the same month that the first meeting at Champoeg was held, the wagon train got under way in Missouri, both groups being entirely ignorant of each other and unaware of their future relations. The significance of Champoeg is currently recognized, but the significance of the wagon train is often overlooked, and consequently it may be well to correct some misapprehensions concerning it.
The wagon train of 1843 was not the result of an organized movement by any one person or group of persons, but a coming together of various restless and adventurous elements from all parts of the country east of the Rocky Mountains. They assembled at Independence, Missouri, because they had heard the rumor that a wagon train would start from there for Oregon as soon as the weather permitted. Most of them did not know each other and those who had acquaintances and friends deter mined to travel together, as, for example, the families of the three Applegate brothers.
The assemblage was singularly heterogeneous in character, including college graduates and men of no schooling whatever, country-bred and city-bred, socialized and unsocialized, law-abiding and lawless, men accustomed to the discipline of concerted effort and men who were extreme individualists unaccustomed to cooperation of any sort. Frequent clashes of temperament and opinion were inevitable. The first elected captain, Peter H. Burnett, resigned his office after 10 days, ostensibly on the plea of ill-health. At the first meeting for organization a committee was appointed to interview Dr. Marcus Whitman, but nothing is known of what took place in that interview. Captain John Gantt, an American army officer, was engaged to act as pilot as far as Fort Hall.
Dr. Whitman's part in stimulating the emigration has been much discussed. It is plain that the majority of the caravan had not been influenced by him to undertake the journey but,
rather, by the desire to improve their fortunes and to gain the free land which was promised all settlers in Oregon by a bill then pending in Congress. A considerable number, however, had been in touch with Dr. Whitman, either directly or indirect ly, and had learned from him that a wagon train would start from Independence that spring. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Reverend Myron Eells endeavored to get in touch with the survivors of the expedition or their families. He found that of 38 families 22 declared that they had not been influenced in any way by statements emanating from Dr. Whitman, and 18 families declared that they had been influenced by him to make the trip. Dr. Whitman himself was re turning to his home in Oregon after an exciting journey the previous winter to Washington, New York, and Boston, and he brought with him his young nephew, Perrin B. Whitman, a boy 13 years old who, 50 years later, repeated to me the story which his uncle had told him about his visit in Washington and his interview with the President of the United States.
According to Jesse Applegate in his vivid "A Day with the Cow Column," an address prepared for the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1876, there were about 120 wagons in the train, of which 60 were in the slow-moving rear section of which he was captain, and which was responsible for the thousands of loose horses and cattle constituting the chief wealth of the pioneers. To guard these thousands of animals from night attacks by Indian marauders and to drive them along without too much delay, was a heavy burden, but Applegate showed true general ship in organizing his forces. He divided his column into squads of 15 wagons each and appointed a young man of 23, James W. Nesmith, as orderly sergeant to supervise the necessary changes of the night guards. This effective organization seems to have lasted until Fort Hall, when danger from' Indians had ceased and greater speed was needed if the Columbia River was to be reached before snowfall.
The 60 wagons which were not a part of the Cow Column do not appear to have been organized into a coherent body but to have moved along as the owners were inclined, sometimes singly and sometimes in small groups, camping at night near together but not taking orders from anyone, beyond the suggestions of
the pilot, Captain Gantt, as to water and grass and the safest fording places of large streams.
The journey was long, tiresome, and dusty, but not dangerous nor uncomfortable for people accustomed to traveling in wagons or on horseback. Burnett wrote a very favorable account of the road for the New York Herald in 1844, having suffered no great hardships and finding the health of his wife notably improved.
The dual significance of the emigration of 1843 began to be revealed in the discussion at Fort Hall, caused by the declaration of Captain Grant, the Hudson's Bay Company officer in charge of the post, that in his judgment it had better turn aside to California with their wagons or leave them with him and proceed on horseback to the Columbia. A difference of opinion at once arose among the emigrants, some being willing to go to California, as Capt. Gantt and 16 men actually did, a few days later, while, according to Nesmith, "part of the company went on with pack animals leaving their wagons." If these counsels had prevailed, the future of Oregon might have been different, for, although the arrival of so many Americans in the Willamette Valley without wagons would have given a preponderance of Americans, emigration thenceforth would in all probability have practically ceased. The people east of the Rocky Mountains wanted to know whether it was possible to take wagons across the continent to Oregon and few would have ventured on the long and perilous journey if the emigrants of 1843 had followed the advice of Captain Grant.
In 1836, Dr. Whitman had taken a wagon, reduced to a cart, as far as Fort Boise; he had seen the running gears of the three wagons which Robert Newell and Joseph Meek had taken over the Blue Mountains in 1840. He had twice made the journey between Fort Hall and his mission at Waiilatpu. He believed that wagons could be taken the whole way and he had promised President Tyler in Washington that he would lead a wagon train to the Columbia that year.[1] His familiarity with the route and his confidence finally persuaded the bewildered emigrants,
and with him acting as guide, they set out on the most difficult part of their great march across the sandy and rocky wastes of southern Idaho towards the distant forest heights of the Blue Mountains.
Dr. Whitman was with the train as far as the Grande Ronde Valley at the eastern foot of the Blue Mountains, where he was startled by receiving a message from the mission at Lapwai announcing the serious illness of the Reverend and Mrs. Spalding. He felt that as a physician and missionary his first duty was to his sick colleague. Therefore he reluctantly started north for Lapwai, leaving the guidance of the wagon train to his trusted Indian friend Stickus, a Christian convert of his mission. The route taken by Stickus over the mountains brought the emigrants to the Umatilla River, the distance being calculated by Burnett as 43 miles, and to Waiilatpu as 29 miles further. Dr. Whitman therefore did not guide the emigrants over the Blue Mountains into the valley of the Columbia nor was he present at Waiilatpu to welcome most of them on their arrival at the mission. He reached home from Lapwai about September 28 to find an urgent message from the mission at Tshimakain announcing that Mrs. Eells was expecting the birth of a baby and needed his professional services. He was absent on this trip fro-m October 1 to October 10.
In my out-of-doors pageant, "How the West Was Won," which was produced at Walla Walla in 1923 and 1924, I ventured to take liberties with history for the sake of dramatic effect. I went so far as to represent the members of the three stations of the American Board assembled at Waiilatpu to welcome the wagon train and Dr. Whitman. The spectators were thrilled to see the wagons slowly approach the mission with Dr. Whitman riding triumphantly at their head. As a matter of fact, no wagon came nearer to the mission than two or three miles, because the trail to Fort Walla Walla, their destination on the Columbia, ran three miles west of the mission and no missionaries assembled to meet them, because they were not there, not even Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. Mrs. Whitman was still in the Willamette Valley whither she had gone the previous October and the Doctor was absent on his enforced trip to Tshimakain. When he returned on the evening of October
10, he found that most of the emigrants had already passed, but that they had obtained fresh supplies at the mission from Will iam Geiger, who had been in charge there during Mrs. Whit man's absence. It took more than two weeks for the train to pass the mission neighborhood, for they did not march in a body but drifted along according to the condition of their cat tle. The first-comers were evidently of the lawless type, for Dr. Whitman found that, while he and Mr. Geiger had both been absent at Lapwai, his house had been broken into and the doors left standing open. It was the same sort of pioneers who later obtained supplies on credit from Dr. John McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver and never paid their debts to him.
Nesmith spent the night of October 6 near the mission, bought a bushel of potatoes and a peck of corn and then went on to Fort Walla Walla where he traded his wagon and harness for a horse and proceeded with his companions on horseback to The Dalles. Burnett arrived on the 10th and stayed until the 14th, having many talks with Dr. Whitman during that time. He reached Fort Walla Walla on the 16th, having traveled, according to his own account 1726 miles since May 22 at the average rate of 11¼ miles a day. He left his wagon and cattle at Fort Walla Walla, bought a boat from Archibald McKinlay, the factor, and finished his journey by water.
The three Applegate families likewise disposed of their wagons and livestock at the Fort, but made boats for themselves and finally proceeded down the river to their journey's end at Fort Vancouver.
How many of the original 120 wagons ever reached The Dalles cannot be told. Nesmith says that some were abandoned at Fort Hall, and we know that some were left at Fort Walla Walla. The emigrants who went on with their wagons from Fort Walla Walla to The Dalles may have been too poor to buy boats, -too unskilled to build and use them, or determined in their belief that wagons were indispensable for their future farming. Perhaps they supposed that they would be able to drive their wagons all the way to the Willamette Valley.
It is difficult for present-day Oregonians to believe that for these emigrants the most dangerous and most terrifying portion of their journey was the last 100 miles between The Dalles and
Fort Vancouver. In the closing chapter of that once popular historical romance, We Must March, in which a great deal of fiction is mingled with some history, a vivid description is given of the great wagon train leaving The Dalles under the leader ship of Jesse Applegate for the Willamette. In truth not a single wagon was driven west of The Dalles and no wagon reached the Willamette which had not been taken there by water. It was impossible for a wagon to make its way through the Columbia gorge at that date, and the Barlow Trail over the Cascade Range was not opened until 1846. Whatever unity the wagon train of 1843 may have preserved as far as The Dalles was lost thenceforward. The people of the Willamette Valley never saw this wagon train.
The relation of Dr. Whitman to the wagon train of 1843 has been much discussed, especially his reasons for going east in the winter before. Naive historians have assumed that a man can have only one objective in making a journey, whereas common experience knows that one may have several objects in view. As I go down the street, I tell a friend whom I meet that I am going to my bank to cash a check; to another I am on my way to the barber shop to have my hair cut; while I tell a third that I am to meet my wife at the Marcus Whitman hotel. All of these statements may be true but no one of them tells the whole truth, which was nobody's business but my own. Similarly, Dr. Whitman invited A. L. Lovejoy to accompany him to Washington in order to prevent the sale of liquor to the Indians, a matter in which Lovejoy was probably deeply interested. When Dr. Whitman reached Washington, he had an interview with the Secretary of War concerning the establishment of army posts to protect emigrants from attack by Indians. He also had an interview with the President of the United States and discussed with him, an ardent expansionist, the feasibility of taking wagons across the continent to Oregon. As he passed north from Washington, he had an interview in New York City with Horace Greeley, the famous editor of the New York Tribune, and apparently quickened his eager interest in western emigration. When Dr. Whitman finally reached Boston, the location of the Mission Board which had sent him as a foreign missionary to Oregon seven years before, he discussed with the
Prudential Committee the changes which had taken place on the Mission-field, and found that they had already rescinded the order which some naive historians assert was the sole cause of his eastern journey. He then visited his mother in western New York but could not stay long with her because he said a wagon train of emigrants was soon to start for Oregon. Two of the ablest members of the wagon train of 1843 have recorded their impression of Dr. Whitman and their judicial appraisal of his services. Neither of them had known of him before the assembling of the train at Independence and, as their opportunities for intimacy with him were slight, personal friendship did not effect their judgment expressed a third of a century after his death. Jesse Applegate, "the Sage of Yoncalla" and "the Prince of Pioneers," said in 1876 to the Oregon Pioneer Association: "It is no disparagement to others to say that to no other individual are the emigrants of 1843 so much indebted for the successful conclusion of their journey as to Dr. Marcus Whitman." Peter H. Burnett, a lawyer, helped to organize the provisional government of Oregon, led the first wagon train from Oregon into California, helped to organize a provisional government there, was the first elected governor under that government, served as judge of the supreme court of California, and finally became an influential banker in San Francisco. In 1880 he published his Recollections of An Old Pioneer in which he ex pressed his carefully considered opinion of Dr. Whitman, all the more remarkable a tribute because given by a devout Catholic layman to a Protestant missionary. On pages 249-250 he wrote:
I consider Dr. Whitman to have been a brave, kind, devoted and intrepid spirit, without malice and without reproach. In my best judgment, he made greater sacrifices, endured more hard ships, encountered more perils for Oregon than any other one man; and his services were practically more efficient than those of any other, except, perhaps, those of Dr. Linn, U. S. Senator from Missouri. I say perhaps for I am in doubt as to which of these two men did more in effect for Oregon.
The object of this paper, however, is not to discuss Dr. Whit man, but to correct false impressions concerning the character and influence of the wagon train of which he was a member and especially to make clear the dual significance of that first large emigration to Oregon as judged from the different points
of view of the West and of the East. Future emigration must come from the East and it did actually come in a steadily increasing flood after those hardy pioneers of 1843 had demonstrated that wagons could be driven all the way to the Columbia River. If only five wagons had gotten through, the effect upon the people east of the Rocky Mountains would have been the same; for men were willing to take their wives and children across the continent to the Promised Land if they could take them in wagons, but not otherwise. To the people of the Willamette Valley, however, it was the number of the emigrants and not their wagons which counted.
The wagon train of 1843 not only insured the establishment of that provisional government which was the dream of the men of Champoeg but it also inspired the subsequent stream of emigration which brought 1500 settlers in 1844, 3000 in 1845, 2500 in 1846, and nearly 5000 in 1847, and which brought about the organization of Oregon Territory.
Editor's Note: The foregoing article, touching in some parts upon an old subject of controversial nature, does not necessarily represent the views of the Quarterly. It is printed simply to put Dr. Penrose's evidence on record.
- ↑ I got this information from Perrin B. Whitman who got it from his uncle, Dr. Whitman, within three months after the interview.—S. B. L. P.