Chapter 18

Tuesday May 15, 1849

After making sure we knew which way to head (like the trail led anywhere else), Thomas lit out of here on his horse yesterday morning, eager to see his family.

He evidently saw more than his family. Brother Wilson and two other men from the first group of Mormons rode up to meet us shortly after we headed out this morning. They were here to lead us to a celebration planned in our honor tonight.

Yeah, fine, so I decided to go to Great Salt Lake City. The closer we got to the turnoff for Oregon, the stronger the pull to visit Great Salt Lake City became. While I didn’t really know many of the Mormons well, I knew several, and had met many of the others as I traveled with them or when they stopped at Fort Laramie for a day or two on their way west. I wondered what it was about the Great Salt Basin that drew them like bees to honey and I wanted to see what they’d accomplished in the last two years.

I had made sure to check with everyone in our group before deciding to go to Great Salt Lake City and got smug grins from most in return, as if they’d known all along that I’d visit. When we made the last turn to the west on the trail coming down out of the Wasatch Mountains, I saw hundreds of homes spread out across the part of the valley below us. Many were clustered in the center of the city, but most were spread out on farms. I noted that most of the livestock was gathered in a few large pastures, instead of a few at each farm. The homes were mostly built of sawed lumber, but several were log cabins. The farther from the center of town they were, the more likely they were to be log cabins.

I also noted a monstrous lake west of the city. I’d never seen anything so big. Brother Wilson stopped at that point on the trail. “This is where Brother Young saw the valley and told us it was the one he saw in his vision,” he explained.

It was mid-afternoon by the time we reached the city, although I’d hardly compare it to a city like St. Louis, Louisville, Lexington, or several others I’d seen. It gave me pause to think of all the big cities I’d seen, and about my brother’s comment about my having seen so much while he’d never even been a hundred miles from home.

Now he’s also seen most of those other cities and was seeing this vast lake at the same time I was. Once we reached level ground, Brother Wilson led us towards the center of town, pointing out a large empty plot of land. “That’s where we’ll build our temple,” he said proudly.

When we finally stopped, there were dozens of tables set up outside and more than a hundred men there to greet us. I recognized several and introduced them to my parents and siblings, as well as Tara’s parents and the wives I’d added since my trip west with the first group of Mormons.

“Lewis is an extraordinary man,” Brother Young told my parents. “While others persecute us, he has helped us immensely by guiding our wagons to Fort Laramie and sharing his knowledge so we were better prepared for the journey and what we found when we arrived here. He has donated food and forage to our wagon trains and made sure we had Indian guides to help keep us safe. He even gave us the first panemone,” he said as he motioned to the south and east where dozens of panemone were spinning happily.

By the time introductions were complete, dozens of women had filled the tables with plates loaded with food. As we were eating, Brother Young dropped a bombshell.

“I have ten families going to California and hoped they could join your group for the trip.”

“But ... we’re going to Oregon,” I protested. Even as the words left my mouth, I could feel the falseness of my protest.

“Are you sure?” he asked with a slight twinkle in his eye.

I looked at my wives, and then at the rest of my family. “We all knew you were going to California,” Tara chuckled. “Your mouth kept saying Oregon, but your eyes said California. Belle and Emma even wrote to their parents and said we were heading west, probably to California. We could see that the discovery of gold didn’t interest you, but when you heard that California was part of the U.S., you’d get a faraway look in your eyes every time someone mentioned it.”

The rest of my wives and my family were all nodding in agreement.

“If we’re going to California, that leaves us with a problem,” I reminded them. “I knew approximately where I wanted to settle in Oregon. Aside from the big valley I heard about in California, I have no idea where we should settle. I want to stay away from wherever they’re mining gold, though.”

“The area where our people are heading is a day’s ride from the southern part of the gold fields. It’s far enough away to avoid the trouble, yet close enough to make trips to mining towns to sell farm goods to the miners. Some of the troops we sent there spent some time working in the gold fields. They said that the people selling supplies are the ones who are really getting rich.

“The miners work from first light to dark panning gold from the rivers and streams, and pay a fortune for food, tools, clothing, and other supplies. They only leave their claims when absolutely necessary, worried that someone else will steal it,” he explained.

“Smart,” I replied. “Send people to raise food to sell to the miners. If they ride up and down the river or stream from claim to claim, they can make a lot of money to send here to help pay for the people still moving here,” I mused aloud.

“I hadn’t thought about selling it up and down the river,” he replied thoughtfully. “We planned to set up a market stall in one of the towns.”

“Now I’m glad I brought everything to build a lumber mill,” I commented.

Thursday May 17, 1849

I was scratching my head today, one day before we planned to continue our journey west. The ten families going with us had sixteen people who could drive their forty-seven wagons. The wagons had already been loaded when we arrived, except for a few last-minute items. Brother (call me Hal) Langly said their wagons had been ready for a week. When I asked about the discrepancy between the number of wagons and drivers, he just shrugged. “We were promised that we’d have enough drivers,” he replied nonchalantly.

We also compromised, agreeing to stop every other Sunday. The animals would need it since this would be a longer trip than our group had undertaken before, and the passage through the Sierra Nevada Mountains promised to be the most difficult part yet.

The Sundays that we didn’t stop to rest the animals, we’d allow them an hour after breakfast for their worship.

Friday, May 18, 1849

The mystery of the missing drivers was solved this morning. An additional fifty men showed up to accompany us. When I asked Hal about them, he said the men had been called to go on a mission to California. He explained that the church sent men on missions for various reasons. Some were to convert new members. Some missionaries were assigned the tasks of building and operating the ferries we used on the way to Great Salt Lake City. Brother Jackson’s mission was guiding wagon trains here, although this had been his last trip. He was getting married in a month.

Some men were assigned to scout the Great Basin for resources like minerals, timber, and locations suitable for future settlements. The fifty men with us were going to California for two years to search for gold and to locate any remaining members of the Mormon Battalion, urging them to go to Great Salt Lake City.

I was surprised when we headed north out of Great Salt Lake City, but Hal explained that going to the south meant having to cross the treacherous and waterless salt desert. On the way from California to Great Salt Lake City, men from their Mormon Battalion had tried the California trail, the Bidwell-Bartleson route, the Hastings Cutoff, and had tried to blaze several new routes that didn’t work.

The trail from Great Salt Lake City to the west that proved safest and nearly as fast as shorter routes that cut across the desert was called the Salt Lake Cutoff. It went up the east side of the huge lake, made a wide curve around the north end of the lake, and joined the California Trail just beyond the City of Rocks. It had been pioneered last summer by someone headed back to California. He met two groups of men from the Mormon Battalion and told them about it. They had worked on the trail to make it a viable wagon route.

Friday July 27, 1849

We now know the Raft River, the Humboldt River, and the Carson River just as we know the Elkhorn, Niobrara, and Platte Rivers. Aside from a God-forsaken forty-mile trek across a waterless alkali desert, we have had a nearby source of water almost constantly. We felt blessed that we only lost three mules and one horse crossing the desert. We’d stopped for two days right before crossing to make sure the livestock were rested, well-watered, and well fed. Having been warned about the approaching desert, we cut grass that we stuffed into our wagons every chance we got for more than a week.

This last week has been the most difficult portion of the journey as we fought our way through the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains. In Carson Canyon, we could see where members of the Mormon Battalion had done some work as they made their way east, removing gigantic boulders and widening narrow canyon walls.

Ingeniously, they had piled and then burned readily available driftwood around the large boulders. Then they threw buckets of cold water on the heated rocks and pounded on the cracked rocks with picks, hammers, and shovels to break them into manageable pieces or to widen the walls of the canyon. We helped make the canyon trail even more passable by using black powder to blast several rocks.

Today, we met two new neighbors ... the Stanislaus River and the Miwok Indians. I was relieved to find that the Miwok understood the sign language used by the Plains Tribes. They learned it from the Paiute. Once they understood that we were headed into the valley to grow food, I worked out an agreement to pay the closest village ten bushels of grain and the meat of one of our cattle each autumn for the right to use the land.

With the agreement reached, they happily guided us to and then down the route of the Stanislaus River for three days.

Monday July 30, 1849

We found our new home, a large tract of land along the north bank of the Stanislaus River. The land included flat areas for growing crops, rocky areas to provide rocks for building, and lots and lots of timber. There are also numerous creeks and streams that flow into the Stanislaus River.

Except for the land right along the river, most of the land is elevated above the river enough that we won’t need to worry about flooding. The Mormons were surprised that I intended to buy a tract of land that stretched seven miles along the river and extended four miles north of the river. I explained that I felt we’d eventually need the land. The land was trapezoidal with part of it south of the river.

The nearest Miwok village had already offered us three widows and their five children. We agreed to take them, even before learning that one of the widows had learned Spanish in a mission school and the other had learned enough English to communicate with gold miners near the town of Sonora, which was about thirty miles away.

Rather than the previously agreed upon payment of food for land this year, they eagerly accepted two of the Kentucky longrifles, along with the necessary accessories as this year’s payment.

We immediately unpacked the poor bees and set the hives out where they had access to water and flowers. I used a shovel and was relieved to find that the knee high to waist high carpet of plants didn’t have the same dense root system that the prairie grass had. Still, aside from the rocky areas, tall grass and other green plants covered everything not shaded by trees. I worried for a moment about wildfires, but realized that there were too many trees on the property for wildfires to be a problem like we had at Fort Laramie.

Tuesday July 31, 1849

We started cutting down trees to make corrals and planting the fruit trees we brought with us. Six of the trees didn’t survive the trip. Other men began gathering rocks to build a kiln to burn lime, which we had noticed in several places upstream. We had brought a few barrels of burnt lime to begin the building process.

We needed to dig a well, and two men started working on that. We chose a spot about twenty feet from the base of the elevated area where we intended to build our houses, barns, and any other buildings we needed. The area where we started the well was about twenty feet higher than the riverbank and should be safe from all but the worst flooding. Hopefully, by then, we’d have a panemone operating wherever we needed water and the wells would be on even higher ground.

I didn’t know it at the time, but some of the women had started tobacco seedlings even before we started across the forty-mile desert. They didn’t think the plants would reach full maturity this season, but felt the effort would provide enough tobacco to make the effort worth it. That necessitated men plowing, after the grass and weeds were cut down. Gratefully, our horse-drawn reapers worked on the wild grasses here. Those tiny tobacco seeds produce a surprising number of plants and we had to plow ten acres to plant all that they had started. We still had enough seeds left from our share of last year’s crop to plant more than a hundred acres of tobacco next spring.

One of the retired trappers that came with us had been a surveyor. He had turned to trapping when his equipment was stolen, and he couldn’t afford to replace the costly items. I bought everything he needed the last time I made the trip to St. Louis, having the fur company’s buyer purchase everything for me from back east.

It took six of us a week to survey the plot I wanted to buy. We have a copy of a ten-year-old Mexican map that was sorely lacking in details east of the coastal mountain range. We also have a copy of John C. Fremont’s map from his second expedition. Fortunately, it shows the detail of the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains that the Mexican map lacked. I had no idea what the new government would charge us for land, but our closest estimate on the size of the property was just over 20,000 acres.

I was glad we brought so much money and gold from Fort Laramie. Despite the vast sums we spent buying trading goods, wagons, and equipment each spring, we had far more money when we began the trip west in April than when we first arrived at Fort Laramie. We had all the money Isum and company started with. We had more than replaced any money we used to buy trade goods and supplies each year with what we sold to Fort John and when we sold our furs in St. Louis each spring.

The same with what was left of the money from selling the Greene Plantation and after buying the New Hope Plantation and the two farms I gave Dad. Plus, Dad had returned my share of what we got from Mr. Tyler. Hence, the secret compartments in our wagons were heavily laden with gold and silver coins, not to mention our crude gold ingots.

Wednesday August 8, 1849

The surveyor, as well as Hal and two more of the Mormon men, and ten of our men rode alongside me as we rode west at sunrise this morning. We had the two survey maps, most of our money, and supplies for four weeks secured on our pack mules. Each of us was heavily armed. The two Mormons beside Hal had been to Monterey as part of the Mormon Battalion, so I let them lead the way. Wizzer and six of his fastest offspring and grand-offspring went with us.

Oh, yeah, I was guiding our raft down the last quarter mile of the Stanislaus River, a raft we made this last week. Fortunately, someone moved it yesterday from where we were staying to a spot near the San Joaquin River. That would save a lot of time today. I hoped that the water in the Stanislaus River remained deep enough since it got shallow enough to ford the river on foot in a few places. Mainly, I used one of the long poles to keep the raft in the middle of the river. We’d need the raft to cross the San Joaquin River, or else the horses and mules would have to swim, not a good idea while they’re loaded with gold. While nothing like the Mississippi or the Missouri Rivers, the San Joaquin River was still three hundred feet wide.

Our crossing of the San Joaquin River was uneventful, and we pulled the raft up on the west bank, hoping it would still be there when we returned. We traveled southwest to the hills at the base of the Coastal Mountain Range, mountains much lower and much less intimidating than the Sierra Nevada Mountains had been.

Friday August 10, 1849

We found the spot along the west side of the valley that the Mormons were looking for by mid-afternoon, the beginning of a well-traveled Indian trail through the mountains. We made it a few miles up into the Pacheco Pass before choosing a spot to camp for the night.

While we slept, and sometime before the moon was overhead, the mules began to get antsy and Wizzer let me know we had company of some sort. I crawled out of my bedroll and hid behind a tree, my rifle loaded and aimed where Wizzer was watching.

I pulled the trigger of the Hawken almost reflexively when I saw the mountain lion stalking the mules. Had Wizzer not been looking directly at the cat, I might have missed him in the near dark. “Who’s there?” the sentry shouted.

“It’s Lewis. Wizzer woke me and I just shot a mountain lion,” I replied.

Everyone was up and armed now. Most stopped to pull on their pants and boots before exiting their bedrolls. With Wizzer at my side, I hung the cat from a sturdy branch so I could skin it in the morning and then went back to sleep, after cleaning and reloading the Hawken.

Saturday August 11, 1849

After eating a cold breakfast, I skinned the cat and rolled the head and paws up in the skin. I’d be the one skinned alive if my Indian wives found out that I didn’t save the claws and teeth. They wore trophies of my many kills proudly, but none more so than those from the four grizzly bears I had killed near Fort Laramie.

Shortly after lunch, the narrow pass we were traveling through finally widened enough that a wagon could use it. Like the rugged Carson Canyon we had used to get through the Sierras, the first part of this canyon would need work before wagons could use it. Much of it was a narrow, albeit flat streambed. The bad sections were narrow, rocky clefts. I wondered if these mountains got snow like the Sierras did.

By early afternoon, the pass became a narrow valley, nearly half a mile wide in most places. An hour later, we rode out of the narrow valley into a wide, fertile valley. After letting the horses and mules drink one last time from the small stream that had been our companion since entering the pass, our guides continued southwest towards the southern end of what at first, looked like the edge of another mountain rising two hundred feet from the floor of the valley.

When we reached the southern tip of what had appeared to be a mountain, we could see that it looked more like a sand bar in the valley. The odd formation was about two miles long and curved slightly like a comma, varying from a few feet wide to a quarter mile wide. Had it not been rocky and so tall, I would have thought it was a sand bar in the middle of an old riverbed.

Shortly after clearing that, we rounded the end of a small mountain. On the far side of an extension of the valley we had entered was a small town and a large church. “That’s one of the missions the Spanish built in California,” one of our two guides explained.

I now knew where to buy the cattle we wanted. There were thousands of them grazing in the valley, although they were smaller than the cattle I was used to. Men rode around them keeping an eye on them. While the cattle had horns, they didn’t have horns like the longhorns. Two of the men keeping watch on the cattle rode over to us and asked something I didn’t understand. One of our guides replied to him.

“He works for Señor José Castro and wondered who we were and what we were doing here,” one guide explained. “I told him we were headed for Monterey. He says that Señor Castro will insist on us spending the night and eating dinner with him. It’s another two days’ ride to Monterey from here.”

We agreed, and were taken to meet Señor José Castro, owner of Rancho San Justo and twice Comandante General of California while it was still part of Mexico.

He insisted that one of the local women could prepare the mountain lion pelt for me in the time it took us to ride to Monterey and back. I agreed since I didn’t have what I needed to do the job properly. Our dinner that night included an interesting vegetable that looked like a large version of the flower of a thistle bush. Señor Castro called it an artichoke.

Sunday August 12, 1849

We left after a hearty breakfast and a brief worship service by the Mormons. One of Señor Castro’s vaqueros rode with us, showing us the fastest route to Monterey. He also guided us around pockets of quicksand along the Salinas, or Monterey, River that we had to cross.

Tuesday August 14, 1849

Late this morning, we rounded the southern end of a prominent hill named El Toro and I saw Monterey for the first time, as well as the Pacific Ocean. We met Bennet C. Riley, the current military governor of California, and explained that we wanted to purchase land along the east side of the big valley.

He questioned our choice of location, so I explained. “The river provides a water source, although we plan to dig wells and have a sort of windmill to pump water to fill elevated tanks for irrigation and watering livestock. The presence of tall grasses and other plants shows that we should be able to grow our crops there. The location we chose is high enough above the river that it won’t flood.

“We’re close enough to Sonora to sell fresh meat and produce there, yet far enough away that we should be able to avoid the violence and gold craziness.

“We did something similar near Fort Laramie and sold tobacco, corn, beans, and squash to the various Indian tribes in the area. We sold tobacco, corn meal, flour, meat, milk, cheese, eggs, and fresh produce to the trading post,” I explained.

“You will still have to be wary of bandits and the local Indians,” he warned.