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Old 08-18-2014, 07:25 AM
Status: "108 N/A" (set 10 days ago)
 
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A young man who crossed the plains in 1857 wrote to his mother recounting the hard ships of the perilous journey. He managed to shoot himself in the arm trying to climb down a cliff hunting bear and cougar with a side arm he had borrowed. He was required to leave the wagon train alone on a mule and find a doctor in Oregon after four weeks of being ill. It took four more weeks of eating only “bread and sweetened water” for him to regain his strength and rejoin the wagon train. This was dangerous as he wrote that usually if anyone got a mile or more behind the wagon train alone they were never seen again.

He blamed this danger on the government for not having a fort past Laramie but he also blamed Indians and specifically the Mormons who he said ran the trading post and incited them to violence. He wrote to his brother later that year that every intelligent emigrant knows this fact. The trail was littered with the mutilated bodies stripped of their clothing covered with brush. The cause he said was livestock theft. A draft horse he said could be sold for $600.00 if you could get it out to gold country.

They also killed Indians on sight because of this. He wrote that one of his traveling companions was a man more vile than any outlaw or savage he met on trial and that the border ruffians who could drink, swear, and kill with the best of them could not be depended on in a real fight.

Someone I know found copies of these letters and passed them on to me. They were copied from the originals and looked to be hand typed on an old royal typewriter on onion skin paper from the 70’s. I decided to google the name, location from the letters and sure enough a hit pull up J. H. McGuire, Alton Ill, and Shurtleff College where his journey began and the originals appear to be in an archive there.

The best part of the letters is he always ends with how much fun he is having and how he would never trade this experience for anything. If these correspondences are indeed fact, the parts about the Mormons made me wonder if Indians got a bad rap.
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Old 08-18-2014, 10:06 AM
 
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Did the Indians get a bad rap about what? I wouldn't consider the journal to be anything more than typical of the anti-Mormon sentiment of the time. The Mormons frequently came into armed conflict with Indians, especially the Utes.
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Old 08-18-2014, 10:59 AM
 
Location: Orange County, CA
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The Indian menace in the 1850's has been greatly exaggerated. Far more travelers died in accidents or from disease than were killed by warriors. The massed attacks on wagon trains popularized by fiction writers and movies were very rare and almost never happened. Tensions with the Mormons were pretty high in 1857. September 11 of that year was the date of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre, an event that is still debated to this day.
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Old 08-18-2014, 11:07 AM
Status: "108 N/A" (set 10 days ago)
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by joe from dayton View Post
Did the Indians get a bad rap about what? I wouldn't consider the journal to be anything more than typical of the anti-Mormon sentiment of the time. The Mormons frequently came into armed conflict with Indians, especially the Utes.
Seems like the the Indians were not the only threat in crossing the prairie. Lewis and Clark had some what of an uneventful experience, comparably, forty years earlier. The letters accused the Mormons of " employing" various Indians to protect them. The most significant thing I got from the letter was how much of the danger was expected and the writer seem to think it made the experience more worthwhile.
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Old 08-18-2014, 11:15 AM
 
Location: Southern MN
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I spent one summer reading pioneer womens' diaries and found them fascinating. One of the things I remember standing out was the urgency of the trip because of the approaching winter. It was crucial that they arrive in time to build shelter and lay in provisions. A delay because of a break-down or an early fall could mean death.

Another issue of concern for the women was caring for infants on the trip and many of them were also pregnant. An infected insect bite, diaper rash, sunburn or childhood disease could kill and the trails they followed were marked by little graves with stones piled on top in hopes of keeping the animals away from the contents. One woman took to counting the graves as they traveled. Another talks about burying her child and having to leave it there alone on the prairie.

Issues of feminine hygiene were problematic because of the expected modesty of the time. After a long, hot day of traveling (usually walking) the women often waited until the men were sleeping so they could creep out to a source of water and clean themselves.

Another woman wrote of how much difficulty her husband had getting along with the others they were traveling with and the fear she had that he would split from the group. She was due to give birth during the trek and was relying on the help of the other women they were traveling with.

Many of these families had heirlooms that had been brought from Europe by the original immigrants and, because of their weight, eventually had to abandon them on the trail. It wasn't uncommon to come upon a muddy stretch and see desks, other furniture, even pianos sitting by the side.

When I take a walk out on a sunshiny day on what little natural prairie we have left I try to imagine what it must have been like walking through the tall grass with the birds and butterflies. It must have been glorious some days on their way to their new homes. And after the reading I've done I also remember the trepidation and the loss which must have traveled with them.
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Old 08-18-2014, 11:35 AM
 
Location: Central Nebraska
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The Mormons had originally intended to form their own country the same way the Texans had done and the Californians started to do. But the United States gained control of all that area in the 1848 war with Mexico. Mormons still tried to maintain some sort of independance, though. To understand all of this you would need to understand how vastly different from other Christian Faiths Mormonism is and how big a role churches played in American life at that time as religion deeply influenced political decisions--slavery, for instance. The Mormon practice of polygammy threatened to out-populate and therefore out-vote all other Faiths. The Mormons also believe in a current, reigning Prophet whose word superceeds Federal, State, and Local governments. Thus there was quite a bit of anti-Mormon sentiment and the Mormons wanted their own country so they could be free of it.
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Old 08-18-2014, 11:55 AM
 
Location: Central Nebraska
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A couple of things seldom shown on TV or in the movies is that most of the wagons were drawn by oxen--which were cheaper and stronger than horses and easier to round up--and hooks were placed in the hoops that held the canvas, pans were hung from these hooks and banged against each other every step of the way--accounts of the time mention the "noise of the wagon trains".
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Old 08-18-2014, 12:36 PM
Status: "108 N/A" (set 10 days ago)
 
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A lone traveler would have to find a wagon that would take you along. You would have to work for your passage. Hunting, gathering wood, and what was called after hours labor, watch duty, as well as other protective services.
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Old 08-18-2014, 01:06 PM
 
Location: FROM Dixie, but IN SoCal
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Regarding the "Indian threat" (my term for use in this post ONLY):

To get a much better idea of how things came about, review the terms and conditions set forth in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Now examine the route of the Bozeman Trail, and a portion of the Oregon Trail as they pertain to the lands this treaty deeded/ceded to the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nations.

It was the whites' disregard for the terms of the 1851 Treaty that led to Red Cloud's War, and to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. By the way, the whites also disregarded/abrogated the terms of the 1868 Treaty. In both cases the disregard was driven/fueled/influenced by G O L D, the "yellow metal that makes whites crazy."

===============================================

And, before we get too far into the whole Mormonism thing, we may wish to consider how (and more important, WHY) the Mormons came to move from Missouri to what is now Utah.

-- Nighteyes (Mississippi Choctaw, and not a Mormon)
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Old 08-18-2014, 01:46 PM
 
12,064 posts, read 23,092,364 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackShoe View Post
The Indian menace in the 1850's has been greatly exaggerated. Far more travelers died in accidents or from disease than were killed by warriors. The massed attacks on wagon trains popularized by fiction writers and movies were very rare and almost never happened. Tensions with the Mormons were pretty high in 1857. September 11 of that year was the date of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre, an event that is still debated to this day.

Yep, bad weather, lack of water, illness, and assorted msfortunes were much bigger threats than the Indians.
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