Last spring, 1846, was a busy season in the City of St. Louis. Not
only were emigrants from every part of the country preparing for the
journey to Oregon and California, but an unusual number of traders
were making ready their wagons and outfits for Santa Fe. Many of the
emigrants, especially of those bound for California, were persons of
wealth and standing. The hotels were crowded, and the gunsmiths and
saddlers were kept constantly at work in providing arms and
equipments for the different parties of travelers. Almost every day
steamboats were leaving the levee and passing up the Missouri,
crowded with passengers on their way to the frontier.
In one of these, the Radnor, since snagged and lost, my friend and
relative, Quincy A. Shaw, and myself, left St. Louis on the 28th of
April, on a tour of curiosity and amusement to the Rocky Mountains.
The boat was loaded until the water broke alternately over her
guards. Her upper deck was covered with large weapons of a peculiar
form, for the Santa Fe trade, and her hold was crammed with goods for
the same destination. There were also the equipments and provisions
of a party of Oregon emigrants, a band of mules and horses, piles of
saddles and harness, and a multitude of nondescript articles,
indispensable on the prairies. Almost hidden in this medley one
might have seen a small French cart, of the sort very appropriately
called a "mule-killer" beyond the frontiers, and not far distant a
tent, together with a miscellaneous assortment of boxes and barrels.
The whole equipage was far from prepossessing in its appearance; yet,
such as it was, it was destined to a long and arduous journey, on
which the persevering reader will accompany it.
The passengers on board the Radnor corresponded with her freight. In
her cabin were Santa Fe traders, gamblers, speculators, and
adventurers of various descriptions, and her steerage was crowded
with Oregon emigrants, "mountain men," negroes, and a party of Kansas
Indians, who had been on a visit to St. Louis.
Thus laden, the boat struggled upward for seven or eight days against
the rapid current of the Missouri, grating upon snags, and hanging
for two or three hours at a time upon sand-bars. We entered the
mouth of the Missouri in a drizzling rain, but the weather soon
became clear, and showed distinctly the broad and turbid river, with
its eddies, its sand-bars, its ragged islands, and forest-covered
shores. The Missouri is constantly changing its course; wearing away
its banks on one side, while it forms new ones on the other. Its
channel is shifting continually. Islands are formed, and then washed
away; and while the old forests on one side are undermined and swept
off, a young growth springs up from the new soil upon the other.
With all these changes, the water is so charged with mud and sand
that it is perfectly opaque, and in a few minutes deposits a sediment
an inch thick in the bottom of a tumbler. The river was now high;
but when we descended in the autumn it was fallen very low, and all
the secrets of its treacherous shallows were exposed to view. It was
frightful to see the dead and broken trees, thick-set as a military
abatis, firmly imbedded in the sand, and all pointing down stream,
ready to impale any unhappy steamboat that at high water should pass
over that dangerous ground.
In five or six days we began to see signs of the great western
movement that was then taking place. Parties of emigrants, with
their tents and wagons, would be encamped on open spots near the
bank, on their way to the common rendezvous at Independence. On a
rainy day, near sunset, we reached the landing of this place, which
is situated some miles from the river, on the extreme frontier of
Missouri. The scene was characteristic, for here were represented at
one view the most remarkable features of this wild and enterprising
region. On the muddy shore stood some thirty or forty dark slavish-
looking Spaniards, gazing stupidly out from beneath their broad hats.
They were attached to one of the Santa Fe companies, whose wagons
were crowded together on the banks above. In the midst of these,
crouching over a smoldering fire, was a group of Indians, belonging
to a remote Mexican tribe. One or two French hunters from the
mountains with their long hair and buckskin dresses, were looking at
the boat; and seated on a log close at hand were three men, with
rifles lying across their knees. The foremost of these, a tall,
strong figure, with a clear blue eye and an open, intelligent face,
might very well represent that race of restless and intrepid pioneers
whose axes and rifles have opened a path from the Alleghenies to the
western prairies. He was on his way to Oregon, probably a more
congenial field to him than any that now remained on this side the
great plains.
Early on the next morning we reached Kansas, about five hundred miles
from the mouth of the Missouri. Here we landed and leaving our
equipments in charge of my good friend Colonel Chick, whose log-house
was the substitute for a tavern, we set out in a wagon for Westport,
where we hoped to procure mules and horses for the journey.
Enter page number
Next
Page 1 of 128
Words from 1 to 1021
of 129303
