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January 14, 1847 trip to St. Louis

This year was again a cold trip, including several days of light snow. Like I do each year as we near the Council Bluffs trading post, I stopped to visit the Pawnee village of Chief Two Wolves. He told me about this year’s new wrinkle. There was a new village of white settlers on this side of the Missouri River. He told me that they wanted to speak with me and wanted my help. I was surprised that the Pawnee were aware of the route we took until he explained that his village used the same route when they went to the trading post at Council Bluffs to trade their furs. He said the new village was less than half a morning’s ride north of where we met our ferry. The white settlers had their own ferries, one slightly south of our ferry, and another one near their new village.

I thanked him for the information and spent the next day and a half wondering who the settlers were and what they wanted from me. As we neared the Missouri River, we could see smoke from more than a hundred chimneys to the north of us.

“I think that’s your destination,” Nawaji commented, pointing towards the smoke. “Go ahead, I think we can find our way to the river from here,” she teased.

After kissing goodbye the five wives who accompanied us this spring, I headed due east while everyone else continued southeast. “They have their own ferry, so I’ll meet you in Council Bluffs,” I promised.

An hour later, I reached the outskirts of the village. From a distance, I could see several hundred small log cabins and small sod homes inside a huge wooden stockade. Covered wagons--sans the canvas--or smaller handcarts like the women used in our garden, were parked near most of the homes. Dozens of men were out and about, despite the early hour. Most of them eyed me suspiciously, but still gave me a friendly nod in recognition as I rode by, one I returned.

I rode up to one of the gates in the stockade and was greeted by one of the two guards. “Greetings, stranger. What brings you here?” he asked.

“I’m Lewis Clark. Pawnee friends of mine told me that somebody here wanted to talk to me and wanted my help with something,” I replied.

“Let’s see if we can find one of the Twelve,” he replied, motioning towards the center of the village. Wondering what he meant, I climbed down from my horse and walked next to him.

“I don’t remember anyone living here last year, but I guess we were a few miles away when we went by,” I commented.

“We just got here a few months ago,” he replied. “We started south of here, and then moved about three miles east of here. When the Oto and Omaha Indians started threatening to fight each other over who owned the land we were on, we moved here instead. This is a place for us to stay temporarily until we can travel to the west to settle in the Great Basin later this year,” he explained.

“Ah, here’s Brother Kimball,” he said a few minutes later. “Brother Kimball, this is Lewis Clark. His Pawnee friends told him that someone here wanted his help with something,” the man explained.

“Are you from Fort Laramie?” he asked.

“Practically, my home is about three miles from the actual trading post, but I sell them food and accompany their resupply wagons to St. Louis each spring,” I replied.

“You just got here from Fort Laramie?” he asked, stunned. “I’m surprised that you could survive the cold.”

“As long as you’re dressed for it, it’s survivable. I go out hunting and trapping in early January before we leave, and it doesn’t even get up to zero during the day. February gets a bit warmer, as do March and April,” I explained.

“Do you know someone the Indians call Strong Hand?” he asked.

“That would be me,” I replied, “a name given me by the Pawnee. Now, the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, and others call me the same thing.”

“We understand from the man at the trading post across the river that you’ll be going back by here in a few weeks and returning to Fort Laramie.”

“Yes, once we get to St. Louis it usually takes four weeks for someone to go back east to order the supplies for the trading post and for the supplies to arrive in St. Louis. Then we take a steamboat back here and head back to Fort Laramie. It usually takes us about five weeks to get back here, and another four to reach Fort Laramie, depending on how heavily our wagons are loaded and how many wagons we have. This year should be our second biggest group of returning wagons. With the increasing number of people heading to Oregon, the fort needs to buy more and more supplies. In addition, more of the Indian nations are trading at Fort Laramie.”

“We talked with several trappers. They recommend that we take the trail to Fort Laramie, and then towards Fort Bridger before heading for the Great basin. They tell us that the trip to Fort Laramie following the Platte River takes about six weeks, but the man at the trading post across the river tells us that your group usually makes it in four weeks. We hope to plant at least some crops this year and those extra two weeks could mean the difference between planting this year or not,” he explained.

“I don’t mind helping to guide you to Fort John, or Fort Laramie as many people call it, but it would be something everyone in our group would have to agree on. Once there, I’m sure I can find some Crow or Shoshoni braves willing to guide you to Fort Bridger. I’ve never been that far before. Our group should have finished ferrying across the river by now, but I hear that you have a ferry. We could cross and talk to the others,” I suggested.

“I’m afraid we won’t be able to pay you much if you agree,” he admitted.

“We’ve let missionaries bound for Oregon go with us before and never charged them anything so we wouldn’t charge you anything. How many people and wagons do you plan to send?” I asked.

“Just enough people to drive a hundred-fifty wagons to carry everything they’ll need to survive for a year,” he said nervously.

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “That many wagons may slow us down a bit. The most we’ve returned with is thirty-one wagons--eight for the fort and twenty-three for me.”

“Why did you have so many more than the fort?” he asked. I gave him a short version of bringing so many former slaves, as well as three of my siblings and their families back.

“This year the trading post will have fourteen wagons filled with their goods, although eight of the wagons they’ll use are mine that they’ve borrowed. We’ll have at least twelve wagons, and maybe more depending on what the women find to buy,” I chuckled.

“Let’s find Brother Young so he can go with us to talk with the others in your group,” he suggested.

It took nearly half an hour to find Brother Young. It seemed as if he had just left every group we asked about him. We finally found him with several men and a handful of women, their heads bowed in prayer as Brother Young had his hands on the head of a sick child giving him a blessing so the child would recover from whatever was causing his high fever.

When they finished, I whispered to Brother Kimball, “I have an herb that we use if we’re sick. It seems to cure most everything, but we usually take it before we get that sick,” I said, nodding towards the listless child.

“Really? Where do you get it?” he asked excitedly.

“Initially, we traded with the Arapaho. They got it in trade from the Jicarilla and the Comanche who live far to the south of us. We asked every Arapaho village that traded with us to get us some if they could so we always had extra. We finally managed to get seeds and grow our own now. I’ll warn you that the tea tastes like boiled animal dung,” I warned.

“You’re sure that it’s safe?” he asked.

“We give it to everyone in our village, even infants,” I replied. “We just give the younger ones less than the adults. I have extra in my saddlebags if you want it,” I offered.

“How much do you want for it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Like I said, we have extra. We’ll get a new crop in a few months and just throw away the old stuff.”

“Can you show us how to use it?” he asked. I agreed and he hurried over to catch Brother Young before he took off again. When I learned how many people in the town were ill, I suggested boiling a large pot of water. I used about half of what I had and made a strong batch of tea, then cooled it down by adding cold water. I showed them how much we gave infants, children, and adults, and then I drank the foul concoction. I’d heard someone quietly mention the word ‘Mormon’ and realized that these were probably some of the Mormons who had been chased out Illinois and Missouri. I could understand why they might be a little suspicious of an outsider.

Three women heard my instructions. As soon as they saw me drink the tea, they wanted to start giving it to their ill. I gave them the rest of the herb that I had and told them to give everyone who was sick a second dose tomorrow. I knew Nawaji had more in her saddle bags.

While I was making the tea, Brother Kimball spoke with Brother Young about going to the trading post to speak with the others in my group. “You don’t mind traveling with Mormons?” he asked.

“I don’t, and I doubt that the others will,” I replied. “We’ve let Episcopal, Methodist, and Jesuit missionaries travel with us with no problems. We can ask the others to be sure.”

We took their raft across the Missouri River and caught up with the rest of our group as they were finishing lunch. “Are there any foods you’re not allowed to eat?” I asked, remembering hearing something about some sort of restrictions from a passing trapper.

“We’re not to drink alcoholic beverages or hot drinks, but there are no restrictions on specific foods,” he replied with a small smile.

While the three of us ate lunch, I explained to everyone in our group what they wanted. “We can try it,” Tara agreed. “If it looks like they will slow us down too much, we can take our wagons ahead at a faster pace. You should know the way by now,” she teased me.

“Most of my wives know the way by now,” I riposted, making everyone laugh.

“You’ll be going further than we are, at least twice as far,” I warned the two men. “You’ll want four oxen or six mules for lighter wagons and six oxen or eight mules for heavy wagons. Oxen travel slower than mules, about five miles a day less, but mules will require oats occasionally. Oxen can get by on whatever vegetation is around but are only good for a maximum of fifteen miles a day. Since you’re in a hurry to get to your destination, mules are the way to go if you have access to enough.

“There are a couple of places beyond Fort Laramie where you may have to double up teams to get up steep slopes, but I’d use mules if it was me. If you decide to use oxen, make sure they are shod. Likewise, if you take cows, make sure they are shod. Carry extra parts like wheels, tongues, axles, singletrees, and doubletrees. Have what you need to repair saddles, harnesses, and reins. You’ll need to carry some hay for the animals for nights when we can’t find a place to stop that has forage available, especially with as many animals as you’re going to have.

“Other than that, we should be back here in about five weeks. The steamboat to St. Louis should be here today or tomorrow. Be ready to leave in five weeks and we’ll take you with us,” I agreed.

The Mormon men, wagons, and animals were ready to go when we returned. The three women who went with them spent a lot of time with my wives and the other women with us trying to learn more about the conditions they would be facing, as well as how to deal with the Indians. My wives, and by extension me, learned a lot more about the terrifying persecution the Mormons had faced for the last two years and the number of their members who died as a direct or indirect result. I had to admire them for having the courage of their conviction. Had someone come after my family and friends like that, instead of leaving my home behind, I would have done my best to make sure the attackers were visiting the fires of hell.

The Mormons were curious about the large brown fist on the canvas on both sides of our wagons. We explained that it signified my Indian name, Strong Hand. I was well known by most of the tribes in the area and it let any Indians we met know who we were. The Oto and the Omaha tribes were the only tribes between the Missouri River and Fort John that didn’t know me, but we’d never had problems with them.

The extra wagons only slowed us down by three days. The only real issue was that, like the missionaries, they hoped we wouldn’t travel on Sunday, their Sabbath. I gave them an hour at the start of the day each Sunday to worship, but insisted that we get in a full day of travel.

When we reached Fort John, I was surprised to find even more Mormons waiting for them. Some had been part of what they described as the “Mormon Battalion.” After beginning the march to California to serve as part of the American troops going there to fight against Mexico, they had been excused from service due to ill health.

Others were Mormons who had taken a different route north from Mississippi and were waiting to join the vanguard company for the trip west. After a two-day rest at Fort Laramie, I went with them as they continued on their way to Fort Bridger. I agreed to guide them until I could find Crow or Shoshoni guides for them. Two former Crow and two former Shoshoni men from our village went with me. We stopped for an hour when we got to the salt deposit and they watched as I blasted loose several hundred pounds of salt that they loaded into their wagons, replacing food that they’d already eaten. We’d given the Mormons a hundred pounds each of garlic and onions, as well as radishes and other vegetables from our glass-roofed houses, twenty parfleche bags of pemmican, five hundred pounds of potatoes, and five hundred pounds of the squash we trade to the Indians.

It took us four days to find a Crow village with younger braves who agreed to guide the Mormon wagons to Fort Bridger. Actually, the chief agreed to send the four young men when I offered to give the village a hundred pounds of corn and four pounds of tobacco in exchange.

Brother Young, or as I learned, Brigham Young, thanked me for everything, especially the panemone I gave them, along with two hundred feet of cast iron pipe, a pump, a hand pump, and the necessary fittings to hook the windmill up to pump water.

Several men from the group stopped to see us in August on their trip back to Winter Quarters so they could lead additional, larger groups to the site they had selected for their community. These men were all on horseback, and each led a long string of mules so their return trip to Winter Quarters was much faster than the trip to the Great Basin had been. Seven weeks later, they began coming back through with much larger wagon trains. Overall, I think they guided nearly 1500 people to the Great Basin that year. Last I heard, they made it safely, even though it was December when the last group arrived at their destination. I noted that about a third of them were age twelve or younger.

Monday December 27, 1847

During this last summer, we finished building housing for everyone, although we had to build six clusters of cabins on different ridges. Surprisingly, many of the Crow and Cheyenne members of our community stayed in tipis in all but the worst weather. During the worst weather, they stayed in a large community cabin with partitions for each family. We built a community cabin for each of the five Indian villages, one on each of five different ridges. Each community cabin had cast iron stoves, full coal bins, and a stone and mortar water cistern inside it.

“Good to see you, Mr. Chouteau,” I greeted him when I opened the door from the walkway between the cave and our cabins. He had knocked on our window when he arrived to get my attention. One of the sentries saw him and climbed down to open the cave door for him. Having been here many times before, he knew where the door to the tunnel from our cabin to the cave was and met me inside the cave.

“I came to let you know that I want to send the wagons early again this year,” he said as he stomped the snow off his boots and shed his long fur coat while I put his horse into a stall after loosening the saddle. We walked back towards the cabins, through the mudroom where he left his boots and hung up his long fur coat and the heavy coat he had on beneath it. He startled when he heard a female giggle coming through the wall of one of the bathing rooms.

“Did I interrupt something?” he asked cautiously.

“Not me, someone is bathing, though,” I explained as I led the way through the communal kitchen and dining room and then to my front door. My wives all greeted him when we entered. The kids ran over and hugged a leg, each greeting him as best they could. He took a second and tousled the hair of each one before they ran back to the mothers, giggling.

“We’re expecting even more wagons headed for Oregon and the Great Basin this year and are low on almost everything. Having the Mormons come through was a surprise. I’d like to send the wagons January 10 if possible,” he said.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I agreed, especially since, lately, we seemed to head east sometime between the 7th and 14th of January each year.

“Could you take care of our money and supplies again?” he asked.

“I can do that,” I agreed. It hadn’t been much different last year since the manager of the fur company in St. Louis took care of most of the work of ordering their supplies. I just carried the list of what they wanted and their emergency gold in case what they earned for the furs didn’t cover everything. I took back any extra gold and the final tally sheet for what they got for the furs and everything cost.

We had even more copper to take this year thanks to the steam-powered stamping mill. We also built a steam-powered sawmill this summer and had men working there every day since it was finished, even during the winter. Now, we no longer had to buy lumber and cart it back here. Both the copper mine and the lumber mill had huge bins for coal that were full before the first snow hit.

January 10, 1848 trip to St. Louis

I was surprised the day before we left when Brother Jackson and nine more of the Mormon men arrived, headed east. “We’re headed back to get the next group of wagons ready to depart. Would you mind if we come back this way with you again?” he asked.

“Not a problem, and you know what you need to do to have everyone ready,” I replied.

“I’ll admit that I thought you were being overly cautious before we left that first time, but now that we have made the trip a couple of times, I understand why you wanted everything the way you did,” he admitted. “Everyone who was in that first group said to make sure I thank you again.”

They left with us the next morning, but quickly outdistanced us. Their horses and long strings of lightly laden mules moved much faster than our wagons. The next time I saw the men was in the town of Kane, near the Council Bluffs trading post. Their town on this side of the Missouri River that they had called Winter Quarters was now deserted. They had already sent three of the men who arrived with Brother Jackson to St. Louis to buy more supplies for the trip east.

By the time we got to Council Bluffs, I knew that I wouldn’t make many more of these trips. As special as our valley was, I wanted to move somewhere warmer. Oregon was the logical choice. All the stories I’d heard, no matter how exaggerated, drew me to a place with so much fertile soil, plenty of water, and little or no snow. I wondered about making such a rash decision, but finally admitted to myself that the decision had been growing slowly in the back of my mind since even before Samuel asked to work for us.

When I told Tara, she almost laughed at me. “We’ve all seen the faraway look you get whenever someone mentions Oregon. We knew it would happen sooner or later.”

Striking Eagle and I rode to the town of Kane and met Brother Jackson, reaffirming that they could return with us. Brother Jackson thought they would have eighty to eighty-five wagons this time. I suggested that, in the future, they send their men to Louisville if they had to buy supplies. They could also check across the river in Jeffersonville. They’d find everything they needed and prices in St. Louis were usually half again as much as in Louisville and Jeffersonville. Even with the cost of the passenger fares and the freight cost for their supplies, they’d save a lot of money.

The first thing I did when we finished at the fur office was seek a gun smith’s shop. The owner recommended the M1843 carbine, so I bought the six he had. Hurrying back to the fur office, I asked the manager of the fur trading company to add ten cases of the M1843 carbines to my part of their order and gave him plenty of gold to get those and everything the carbines needed.

I also talked to the Hawken Brothers who eagerly agreed to increase our order of rifles for next spring to forty-eight. Then I checked the other gunsmiths and merchants and bought every longrifle and M1843 carbine that I could find. I bought more cast-iron pipe and fittings since we needed to run pipe throughout the fourth valley that we intended to plant this spring. I was sure that, by the time we got back, there would be two new panemone and two new towers ready for that valley. All we had to do was wait until the ground thawed and dig a well, install the panemone, build a cistern, and run the cast iron pipe from the cistern to where we needed it to irrigate the crops in the valley.

Since I had both money and room, I bought two sets of mill wheels like the ones we already had. I was sure that Oregon had mills, but I had no idea where they would be in relation to where we might end up settling and I’d rather be safe than sorry.

I also bought more tools, even though we had plenty of tools. I didn’t want to short anyone who decided to stay in the valley when we left. I bought more of the prairie plows, even though the soil in Oregon was nothing like the prairie soil. The steel plows just worked better than older-style plows. I bought lots of the things I remembered that we had on our original list. We had to buy three more wagons to hold the extra things. This time, we wouldn’t have to buy seeds for anything.

The Mormon wagons were already waiting for us on the west side of the Missouri River when the steamboat dropped us off, saving us a day or two of waiting as they crossed the river. I noted that their wagons also had the extended covers for the drivers. When we stopped for the night, I saw that their wagons were even topped off with dry prairie grass. Most of them were surprised when I left Tara, Jimmey, and Striking Eagle in charge while I struck out to scout the trail. When we set up camp for the night, Brother Jackson began introducing me to everyone--not that I would be able to remember most of their names.

On the trip back, I talked to Striking Eagle, telling him that I would probably only make one or two more trips to St. Louis before we headed west to Oregon. I assured him that we would leave everything they needed. I intended to talk to Samuel, Arnaud, and George. If any of them stayed, I’d see if they would make a trip to St. Louis later in the spring to buy more rifles.

Once we got back, we told the rest of my wives, and then Tara began making lists of what we needed to take with us. I was surprised that she still had her original lists so she could refer to them. In the meantime, I talked to Samuel, Arnaud, George, and the other trappers who worked for us. Samuel decided to stay and agreed to make the trip to St. Louis later in the spring. Arnaud and George wanted to go to Oregon with us. Then I began an inventory of what we had in the way of tools, wagons, horses, and mules. Since we were already a third of the way between St. Joseph and Oregon, I had no intention of using oxen unless we didn’t have enough mules.

December 1848

The number of villages that showed up to trade with us increased only slightly this last year. What they brought to trade increased significantly, however. Most villages that traded with us had one or two of the longrifles that made it safer and easier to kill the buffalo they needed. They traded some of their extra buffalo meat, as well as some of their extra corn and beans to villages that didn’t make the trip to trade with us, getting even more furs and buffalo hides in return.

A representative for the US Army visited Mr. Chouteau in early May, warning him that they intended to buy his trading post the following summer. The army wanted the Fort John/Laramie location because the ground on the side of the fort rising from the Laramie River was a steep escarpment, and easy to protect. Showing what a shrewd trader he was, Mr. Chouteau sold it to them this year, provided the army help him rebuild on a new site. They could have the old trading post once he built a new place.

In June, a Captain Howard Stansbury arrived with troops, and construction began in earnest.

What Mr. Chouteau didn’t tell them was that he had already decided last spring that he needed a larger place. When he had multiple wagon trains at the same time, his place was awfully crowded. The other consideration was that many of the wagon trains now chose to stay north of the Platte River rather than cross farther downstream and then cross the smaller Laramie River. Staying to the north eliminated extra time-consuming river crossings.

At my suggestion, the Mormons had stayed to the north of the Platte River for another week of travel. They even built their own ferry where they eventually crossed Casper Creek, near the spot where others pioneers re-crossed the Platte to get back on the south side. That allowed the Mormons to avoid any potential confrontations with other wagon trains for several more days. Avoiding confrontations was also why they steadfastly maintained the secret of our faster northern route from Council Bluffs.

The start of the trail along the north side of the Platte River from our place is the road we take to the salt and coal deposits and the copper mine. While people could see that we had buildings at the copper mine, they couldn’t see what we were doing, mainly because we didn’t mine during the warm months. Only a handful of wagon trains went by late enough in the year that we were actively mining, and it was all Mormons coming through that late in the year. Even then, they couldn’t really see what we were doing as the buildings were all enclosed and connected.

I’d shown them the salt and coal mines and given them permission to mine a few wagonloads, but told them I’d rather not discuss the other operation as it might bring too many settlers into the area. I assured them that it wasn’t gold or silver. When other wagon trains asked, we told them we crushed rock there in the winter to use on our roads--which was true. The best example was the road from the ford we had used to reach Fort John from our place and then on to our salt and coal deposits and the copper mine.

Because of only having to ford the Platte River and not the Laramie River, word got out that the route north of the Platte River was better than the original route. Now, everyone wanted to stay to the north of the Platte River, yet another reason Mr. Chouteau wanted to move his trading post.

The best location that I could suggest for building a new trading post was where the road exiting our valley intersected the Oregon Trail on the north side of the Platte River. The new trading post would be right on the Oregon Trail and less than a mile away from us if he needed anything. There was plenty of room for a much larger fort, room for more than two hundred wagons, and room to make enough livestock pens to hold thousands of cattle, as well as the mules, horses, and oxen for those wagons. There was even room for two or three itinerant Indian villages right around the trading post.

Nawaji’s father easily agreed last year to let him use the land. Chouteau, his men, many of our people, and people from several Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux villages spent the summer of 1847 making many thousands of large adobe bricks, as well as cutting down trees for us to cut into lumber at our sawmill. They also leveled the area where the fort would be built.

Dozens of our women cut prairie grass and chopped it up once it was dry. Still more women dug the necessary clay from two clay deposits. One was downstream along the Platte River. The other was along the stream that flowed in front of the spot where Nawaji’s village overwintered, but was further upstream. From our hunting and exploring expeditions, we already knew how to get there by following the branch of our stream to the north and then turning east between two steep bluffs. We even improved the road to that deposit by removing rocks and leveling or smoothing a few of the bumpier parts of the road. That road also made the trip to where we got our sandstone easier.

Other women gathered wagon loads of dry buffalo dung.

While some women gathered, others mixed the adobe, mixing dirt, clay, water, dry buffalo dung, and chopped up dry prairie grass in shallow pits. We even added a bit of burnt lime. Then they added water and stepped into the shallow pits, stomping around and adding water until everything was well mixed and the proper consistency.