On the trail of the pioneers, romance, tragedy and triumph of the path of empire

Front matter

•'.0*-

•xV

ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS JOHN T. FARIS

Preface

It is not the purpose of this volume to give in full detail the historical background of the successive great movements of population from the East to the country West of the Alleghenies; this ground has been covered by authors whose exhaustive books are named in the Bibliography.

"On the Trail of the Pioneers" gives glimpses of many of tliese great movements, the routes the emigrants took, and the sections to which they went. The endeavor is made to answer the questions, Who were tlie emigrants? How an^ where did they travel? What adventures did they have by the way? What were their impressions of the country through which they passed? What did they do when they reached their destinations? The book has been written because the author felt the need of which Claude S. Larzelere. in a paper on The Teaching of Michigan History, wrote:

We talk much in general terms in our American History classes about the westward movement of population. All too seldom do we take actual typical cases of^ emigrants moving to the \\'est by way of the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes, by the Cumberland Road and the Ohio River, or by other roads, bringing out the actual life on the road.

The graphic pictures of the struggles of actual emigrants emphasize as nothing else can the words of the author of A Journey on the Mississippi River:

The West is now a phrase of somewhat indefinite significance. Not verj- long ago it meant Pittsburgh. . . . Fift)- years since,^ Cincinnati was on the verge of the white

* Written in 1847.

V vi PREFACE

settlements. ... Go to St. Louis . . . and you seem to be still as far from this point of the compass as you were at the beginning of your journey. Ask, as I have done, the emigrant who is trudging his weary course across the plains more than two hundred miles from the city of Laclede where he is going; his reply is, "To the West." . . . And now, at the northern pass of the Rocky Mountains, near the 49th parallel, and at the southern pass in the same range, leading to California, the same response, the West, the everlasting West, meets the ear.

It is interesting to note not only how this resistless onrush of the pioneers gave answer to the prophecies of pessimists who declared that it was useless to think of peopling the West from the East, but also how the emigration brought about changes in the boundaries and names of new states which optimistic travelers and statesmen tried to forecast. There were those who once looked for the organization of such states as Cumberland and Transylvania in the region south of the Ohio river; but the overwhelming growth of the country led to the early organization of the single state of Kentucky. Thomas Jefferson was a member of a committee which, in 1784, recommended the division of the country north of the Ohio into states to be called Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonese, Metropotamia, Illinoisa, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia and Pelisipia, but in consequence of the emigrant tide through the Pittsburgh and Buffalo gateways and down the Ohio, the boundaries and, in most cases, the names of the states became quite different.

The fascinating story of the movements that improved on the plan of Jefferson's committee, and went a long way to justify the hyperbole of Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville, "You will see independent America contemplating no other limits but those of the universe," is sketched in this volume.

Full use has been made of the records of early travelers and pioneers which are described in the Bibliography. Grateful acknowledgment is made for the use of copy-

PREFACE vii

righted material to Houghton Mifflin Company, pubhshers of American History and Its Geographic Conditions by Ellen Churchill Semple; to Little, Brown and Company, publishers of The California and Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman; to Lois Kimball Matthews, author of The Erie Canal and the Settlement of the West; to Yale University Press, publishers of A Journey to Ohio in 1810, by Margaret Dwight; to Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers of The Making of the Ohio Valley States, by Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Atidiibon and His Journals^ by Maria R. Audubon; to Princeton University Press, publishers of The New Purchase, by Robert Carlton; to G. P. Putnam's Sons, publishers of The Winning of the West, by Theodore Roosevelt.

John T. Faris.

Philadelphia, 1920.

CONTEXTS

CHAPTER ON'E: THROUGH THE CUMBERLAND GAP TO KENTUCKY' AND TEXXESSEE

PAGE

I Preparing the Way 15

II Through the Gre.\t Wilderxess 2S

III The Ad\'Exture5 of Three Tr.\%-eleks 3S

CHAPTER TWO: THROUGH THE PITTSBURGH AND WHEELIXG GATEWAYS I Braddock's Ro.\d and the Xation.\l Road 51

II Struggles waiH the Alleghexies 5S

III By Stage, by Emigrant Wagon, and on Foot 79

CH.\PTER THREE: FLOATING DOWN THE OHIO AND THE MISSISSIPPI

I In Perh-s of Waters 97

II By Flatboat and Keelboat 110

III From Ark to Steamboat 125

CHAPTER FOUR: FROM NORTHERN NEW YORK AND NEW ENGL.\ND TO THE WEST I The Long Road to the Western Reser\-e 139

II From Land to Water 153

III All the Way to the Mississippi 163

CHAPTER PR'S: THE SANTA FE TRAIL

I The Lure of Gain ISo

III When the Trail was in Its Glory 197

ix

X CONTENTS

Chapter Six: The Oregon Trail Page

I The Wagon Wheels of Whitman 205

II "Travel! Travel!! Travel!!!" 218

HI With Francis Parkman in the West 229

IV Learning by Bitter Experience 236

CHAPTER SEVEN: ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA I A Tragedy of the Trail 251

II Across the Desert in Safety 262