Historic Trails Blog

Francis Parkman, Part 1: A Bad Beginning

2/27/2021

This undated photo shows a young Parkman, probably taken near the time of his trip on the Oregon Trail.

Roger M McCoy

“The Oregon Trail” by Francis Parkman makes it clear that expeditions across the west had great potential for mistakes and accidents. The migrants on western trails must have had some first-day thoughts…anticipation? hope? anxiety? apprehension? regret? They took such a tremendous leap into unknown territory and into an unfamiliar new life. Parkman’s account gives many insights that most travelers’ diaries do not, and it has been widely read since its first publication in 1847. He writes a vivid image of the hustle and busyness of river port cities and assembly points such as St. Louis, Independence, and Westport, Missouri.
   Francis Parkman was not an emigrant, rather he was making a trip to hunt and to satisfy his curiosity as a trained historian. He entered Harvard at age sixteen and after graduation entered law school. The son of a wealthy Boston family, Parkman had sufficient money to pursue his interests without concern about finances. In addition his income was supplemented by royalties from books he authored. He traveled across North America, visiting most of the historical locations he wrote about, and made frequent trips to Europe seeking original documents with which to further his research.
   In the spring of 1846 Francis Parkman, with “friend and relative” Quincy Shaw, left St. Louis in a river steamboat loaded with emigrants, merchandise, mules, horses and “a multitude of nondescript articles.” In a boat that was “loaded until the water broke alternately over her guards.” He wrote that the heavily loaded river steamer, “struggled upward for seven or eight days against the rapid current of the Missouri River, grating upon snags, and hanging for two or three hours at a time upon sand-bars.” He wrote a vivid description of the overloaded riverboat and its array of passengers.
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 gear 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. …In the
  boat’s cabin were Santa Fe traders, gamblers, speculators,
  and adventurers of various descriptions, and her steerage was crowded with Oregon emigrants and “mountain men,” negroes,
and a party of Kansas Indians, who had been on a visit to
  St. Louis.
As they neared Independence, Missouri, Parkman “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.” Parkman conveys a clear picture of the excitement and anticipation among the accumulation of travelers waiting to begin their overland journey…traders headed for Santa Fe, immigrants to far-off California or Oregon, Indians returning to Mexico, French hunters from the mountains with their long hair and buckskin dress.
   Independence was a port city on the river and for emigrants it was the beginning of a 2,170 mile wagon journey to the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Imagine the crowds of people debarking the boat in Independence in anticipation for a new life in a new land. From the Independence docks they traveled overland about twelve miles to Westport, Missouri where they bought mules, horses, wagons, and provisions. Westport at that time was on the western edge of the United States, and the starting point for most westward travelers whether headed to Santa Fe, California, or Oregon. What is now Kansas was still seven years from designation as a territory of the United States.
   In Westport Parkman met a Scot, identified only as Captain C., who had been in the British Army, his brother (unnamed), and Mr. R., an Englishman. For reasons of safety and mutual support they decided to join forces and travel to Oregon together. In addition, Captain C. had employed a Canadian hunter named Delorier and an American [unnamed] as a muleteer. Captain C. had already acquired a number of horses and mules for packing provisions.
   One day while waiting for departure Parkman went to Westport and described the high activity in the city:
The town was crowded. A multitude of shops had sprung
   up to furnish the emigrants and traders with necessaries
for their journey; and there was an incessant hammering
and banging from a dozen blacksmiths’ sheds, where the
heavy wagons were being repaired, and the horses and
oxen shod. The streets were thronged with men, horses,
and mules. While I was in the town, a train of emigrant
wagons from Illinois passed through, to join the camp on
   the prairie, and stopped in the principal street. A multitude
   of healthy children’s faces were peeping out from under
the covers of the wagons. … Whisky by the way circulates
   more freely in Westport than is altogether safe in a place
where every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket.

   Parkman tended to show a low regard for most immigrants, and his comments on them was often disparaging. He especially showed disdain for the uneducated farmers hoping for a new life, Germans, French, Blacks, and Indians. For instance he expressed doubts that some of them could actually believe they would have better lives elsewhere.
Among them are some of the vilest outcasts in the country.
I have often perplexed myself to divine the various motives
  that give impulse to this strange migration; but whatever
they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition
in life, or a desire of shaking off restraints of law and society,
or mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly
  repent the journey, and after they have reached the land
  of promise are happy enough to escape from it.
   Remember Parkman came from a prominent Boston family and probably had little contact with other types of people who populated the midwestern and southern states.
   After eight days of preparation in Westport, Parkman and his traveling companions were ready to embark with their wagon and animals. A few days into Kansas Territory they were hit by an intense thunderstorm. Anyone from the midwest has seen such terrific storms.
We were leading a pair of mules to Kansas when the storm
   broke. Such sharp and incessant flashes of lightning, such
stunning and continuous thunder, I have never known before.
  The woods were completely obscured by the diagonal sheets
  of rain that fell with a heavy roar, and rose in spray from the
ground; and the streams rose so rapidly that we could hardly
ford them.
The storm caused them to return “drenched and bedraggled” the few miles back to Westport. Unfortunately the onset of his long journey was beset by false starts and needless mishaps. A few days later, with clear weather and renewed provisions, they made another near-disastrous beginning. “No sooner were our animals put in harness, than one mule reared and plunged, burst ropes and straps, and nearly flung the cart into the Missouri.” Not long after that experience their wagon became mired in “a deep muddy gully” that delayed them for another hour. Surprisingly this bad beginning left Parkman undiscouraged and determined to continue forward.
   Parkman gives good descriptions of the men he hired for the trip. He described the hunter and guide, Henry Chatillon, as a rather dour character who:
  wore a white blanket-coat, a broad hat of felt, moccasins,
  and pantaloons of deerskin, ornamented along the seams
with rows of long fringes. His knife was stuck in his belt; his
  bullet-pouch and powder-horn hung at his side, and his rifle
lay before him, resting against the high pommel of his saddle,
which, like all his equipment, had seen hard service, and was
  much the worse for wear.
Unlike Chatillon, the Canadian hunter, Delorier, was a man of pleasant character who worked hard and maintained a cheerful disposition in the most difficult times as shown by Parkman’s description:
Neither fatigue, exposure, nor hard labor could ever impair
  his cheerfulness and gayety, or his politeness to his bourgeois;
  and when night came he would sit down by the fire, smoke his
  pipe, and tell stories with the utmost contentment. In fact, the
prairie was his congenial element.
A few hours’ ride brought them to the banks of the Kansas River. They passed through the woods that lined the river and encamped not far from the bank. Finally after several beginnings to their trip Parkman wrote, “Our tent was erected for the first time on a meadow close to the woods, and the camp preparations being complete we began to think of supper.” Then Parkman took his rifle and went to hunt for dinner.
  A multitude of quails were plaintively whistling in the woods and meadows; but nothing appropriate to the rifle was to be seen,
  except three buzzards, seated on the spectral limbs of an old
dead sycamore, their ugly heads drawn down between their
  shoulders. …as they offered no epicurean temptations, I
  refrained from disturbing their enjoyment; and contented myself
  with admiring the calm beauty of the sunset. …and the river,
eddying swiftly in deep purple shadows between the impending
woods, formed a wild but tranquilizing scene. [One hopes the hired hunters had better results.]

   At last Parkman and his group were underway and headed for Oregon.

Source:
Parkman, Francis, The Oregon Trail. Heritage Press, 1943. (original publication 1849.)

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Roman Roads: From Ruts to Rails

2/1/2021

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Roman road network at its maximum, about 350 CE.

Roman road under construction. Note the surveyor using a "groma." He aligned the strings to project a straight line or turn an angle.

A portion of the Appian Way near Rome. It was named for the builder, Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 BCE.

1840 railroad with stagecoaches on rails.

Roger M McCoy

   Roman roads, like major roads today, were built for communication, transport of goods, and movement of armies. The distinction of Roman roads is that they were the first roads forming a network connecting much of Europe and the Middle East, and they were also the first in Europe to be constructed with a base layer covered with paving stones, much as roads are built today. Not all their roads, however, were the same quality. Important and heavily used, long-distance roads were built for durability and many have endured to the present.
   Roman builders used whatever materials were at hand to construct their roads, but their design always employed multiple layers. Crews began by digging shallow, three-foot deep trenches and erecting small retaining walls along either side of the proposed route. The bottom section of the road was usually made of leveled earth and mortar or sand topped with small stones. This was followed by foundation layers of crushed rocks or gravel cemented with lime mortar. Finally, the surface layer was constructed using neatly arranged blocks made from gravel, pebbles, iron ore, cut stones, or hardened volcanic lava. Roads were built with a crown and adjacent ditches to ensure easy water drainage, and in some rainy regions they were even positioned on raised berms to prevent flooding. The main roads were built 13.8 feet wide to accommodate two vehicles passing.
On the other hand, minor roads might be merely a dirt or gravel track connecting minor towns to major roads. This certainly sounds the same as road systems in use today. After a major road was built, Roman soldiers patrolled them to guard against thieves and to collect tolls. The illustration above shows a drawing of a major road under construction.
   As with all their construction, the Romans were precise about their road-building. Roman surveyors used a groma, a set of wooden pieces in the shape of a cross that had lead weights on the ends. Lining up the weight hanging off one piece of wood with the piece hanging off the one in front guaranteed a straight line; from that workers could put wooden posts in the ground and then extend the road along the line. The Romans usually preferred to build roads in a straight line regardless of terrain. They drained or filled in marshy areas, or cleared a path through forests. Occasionally they made short deviations around rocky hills, but sometimes they excavated solid rock to maintain a straight line. During road construction the Romans added milestones one thousand paces apart (one Roman mile, 0.92 statute miles).
   Another little known use of the roads was for tourism; many Roman citizens simply had an urge to visit parts of their far-flung empire and the roads made this possible. Romans were especially interested in visiting sites associated with their Gods and myths. The Romans also had a postal system and mail wagons using the roads to distribute mail throughout the empire in a relay system similar to the U.S. Pony Express. The constant traffic of Roman chariots, carts, and wagons created ruts in the stone surface of the roads that were carefully used and maintained because the ruts kept the wheels moving in straight lines, avoiding tipping over. In all, the Romans built more than 250,000 miles of roads that formed a network over their empire. This extensive network was a key element for their control of Western Europe and the Middle East.
   As Romans came under increasing attack by various tribes of people over Europe, they eventually withdrew to the confines of Rome which finally fell around 400 A.D. The Roman road construction left a lasting impression in two ways. First is the continued use of some Roman routes, and even today many modern roads follow the routes of the original Roman roads with minor variation. The second lasting effect is an interesting story that concerns the width of the axles on Roman wagons and chariots.
   You may have wondered (though probably not) why the standard width of today’s railroad track is 4 feet, 8.5 inches (4.708 ft). One answer, which is probably only partially true, is a matter of getting the horse before the cart…literally. The story says that the width of a horse’s rear first determined the axle width of a cart. If the axle is wider it increases the work for the horse and makes turning more difficult.
After the Romans left their territories in northern Europe many roads fell into disuse, but some continued to be used by the local people who built their carts to fit into the ruts left by Roman chariots and wagons.
   By the seventeenth century English stagecoaches began to use the old Roman roads and their axle width was also designed to conform to the ruts. The date of the first use of stagecoaches as a means of public transport is not definitely known, but the first mention came as early as the thirteenth century, and they probably existed for some time before that.
   In 1649 Edward Chamberlayne described his impression of stagecoach travel in his writings titled, Angliæ Notitia: Or the Present State of England.
Besides the excellent arrangement of conveying men
  and letters on horseback, there is of late such an
admirable commodiousness, both for men and women,
   to travel from London to the principal towns in the country,
   that the like hath not been known in the world, and that
is by stage-coaches, wherein any one may be transported
to any place, sheltered from foul weather and foul ways;
free from endangering one's health and by the hard jogging
or over-violent motion; and this not only at a low price (about
   a shilling for every five miles), but with such velocity and
  speed in one hour, as that the posts in some foreign
  countries make in a day.
(NOTE: One shilling in 1649 would be approximately twenty-five U.S. cents today.)
When English steam railroads first began in the early nineteenth century, the builders saw no reason to design a new and different vehicle for passengers. They simply adapted the stagecoach for use on rails. The conveyance pulled by real horses would now be pulled by an “iron horse” on rails. According to this premise, the axle width of the stage coaches determined the gauge of the railroad tracks. As the British developed their empire during the nineteenth century they built railroads of the same gauge in every country they occupied.
There is no certain proof that a linear connection actually exists between the width of Roman carts, stagecoaches, and the gauge of railroads. Perhaps it is simply a strong coincidence.
  Another story is related to rail gauges, rockets, and horses’ rears. The big rocket boosters attached to the side of a space shuttle are built by Thiokol at their plant in northern Utah. These boosters had to ship by rail from the Utah factory across the Rocky Mountains to a launch site in Florida. En route they had to pass through tunnels that were just slightly wider than the train cars, and this width put a constraint on the design size of the rocket boosters. One could suggest, therefore, that the dimensions of modern space vehicles and the rail system were both influenced 2,000 years ago by the width of horses’ rumps. The truth of this connection is also uncertain but it makes a plausible story.
   At the beginning of nineteenth century railroad building in the United States there was some variation in rail gauge. In the South particularly, the Confederacy built railroads of three different gauges. Historian James McPherson pointed out that this lack of standardization created an inefficiency that slowed distribution of goods and contributed to the defeat of the Confederacy. After the Civil War railroad tracks in the South were rebuilt to create a national uniformity of gauge. The important outcome, regardless of rail gauge, is a present day world network of railroad tracks, using the original British stagecoach axle gauge of 4 feet 8 1/2 inches.

Sources
Appian Way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way
David Mikkelson. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/
Roman Roads.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads
Roman Roads. http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/
  worldhistory/romanroads.htm
Roman Roads. https://www.ancient.eu/article/758/roman-roads/

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Margaret Frink reaches Sacramento

11/30/2020

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Alkali flats on the Forty Mile Desert.

Roger M McCoy

   Crossing the driest part of present day Wyoming required carrying enough water to last the seventy miles to the Green River. Margaret Frink wrote that they began the first hazardous twenty-one mile stretch at five in the afternoon so they could travel in the cool of the evening and through the night. She described traveling at night: “the moon shone bright as day and we were in good spirits. A violinist played while others sang, and the long night passed very pleasantly.” They reached a small flowing tributary of the Green River about two A.M. They filled their five-gallon water bottles and stayed there until morning.
   They still faced a forty-mile stretch of land with no water. Margaret Frink wrote, “At six o’clock [A.M.] we started being anxious to get to the Green River as soon as possible.” The wagons reached the west edge of the desert late in the day. From there they could see the Green River several miles ahead. But first they had to get all the wagons down from the bluffs and onto the river plain below. This feat required lowering the wagons cautiously with ropes while the people and animals walked down through narrow gorges on a layer of dust twelve to twenty inches deep. Clouds of blinding, choking dust rose as they passed through the gorges down to the river plain.
   The plain below the bluffs was crowded with immigrants waiting to be ferried across the Green River by one of the two flatboats and rowed across by the ferrymen. Mrs. Frink tells that the poor horses had to swim across, and the water was “high, deep, swift, blue, and cold as ice.” The animals were reluctant to enter the water and one of the Frink’s animals utterly refused. The ferryman finally agreed, against his better judgement, to ferry that one horse across. The other animals had to be led behind the boat. After the crossing all the animals were allowed to rest and graze.
   A disturbing development occurred the next day. Mr. Frink became ill with what she called “mountain fever” and could not walk. He climbed into the wagon with great difficulty and stayed in the bed. They could not make it onto the ferry and their wagon had to wait alone through the night. Margaret Frink told of her feeling of loneliness and helplessness a thousand miles from civilization. For the first time Mrs Frink mentions being frightened. The next morning Mr. Frink had improved somewhat but was still confined to his bed. They crossed the river in the afternoon, but were unable to proceed. After three days Mr. Frink began to improve, but Mrs. Frink called it “the darkest period of our whole journey.” After five days they began to travel again and went twelve miles, and their rate of progress returned to a “normal” twelve to twenty miles per day. In time they were able to rejoin the wagon train.
   In two more weeks they passed a pool of soda water on a mound about five feet high near the site of present day Soda Springs, Idaho. They drove beside it and Mrs. Frink dipped a cup of soda water “without leaving my seat in the wagon. She learned later from other travelers that the soda water made a very light biscuit. [Note: the soda springs the immigrants encountered is a natural spring of carbonated water that is rich in sodium bicarbonate, i.e. baking soda, along with several other minerals derived from an underlying aquifer in lava beds.]
   After several days of travel beyond the soda springs, Margaret Frink wrote about finally reaching the headwaters of the Humboldt River, the migrants highway across what is present day Nevada. Springs flowed from the ground and the grass was plentiful so they encamped for the night. From this point they knew water would be available for most of the 250 miles to the Humboldt Sink, an immense, barren, dry lake bed that they must cross…the so-called Forty Mile Desert.
   After a few days following the Humboldt River, Mrs. Frink told what happened to the young boy, Robert, who traveled with them. “Robert took up a horse near the road, it having the appearance of being lost, and by so doing got separated from us.” Mrs. Frink was very anxious about the boy, but hoped he would find his way back to them. “I was almost frantic for fear the Indians had caught him.” This fear was increased when she heard from others that five hundred natives were camped nearby. When evening came, a man named Aaron Hill unhitched one of his horses and went back to look for Robert. By this time Margaret was distraught with fear that they would never find the boy. Soon after dark Aaron returned with Robert and Margaret wrote, “My fears turned into tears of joy.”
   The trail along the Humboldt River sometimes detours away from the river because of obstructing bluffs. As the wagons moved away from the river they encountered choking dust and little grass. Other times they had no choice but to cross the river and travel on the other side. In one such instance Margaret told of some men who had cleverly made a raft using a wagon turned upside-down with some some empty kegs at each corner as floats. They loaded all the contents of their wagon on the makeshift raft and pulled it back and forth with ropes.
   When they had finished, the raft builders kindly let the Frinks use the raft. Margaret wrote, “We piled our provisions, bedding, cooking utensils, hay, and all the other stuff, and after many trips got everything safely over. When I crossed, I sat with my feet in the wash-tub to keep them dry.” After harnessing the horses and loading the wagons, the Frinks traveled five miles farther before camping for the night.
   Mrs. Frink told about encountering some Hungarians who had not eaten for two days. The Frinks could offer them little help as they were carefully rationing their own food supply, “…the situation looked gloomy to every one of us. They were crossing an extensive area of sand hills with no vegetation. They continued traveling until ten o’clock that night before the trail returned to the river. When they stopped for the night Margaret described, “a terrible scene, the earth was strewn with dead horses and cattle.” That night the horses poked their heads into the wagon and ate all the beans and dried fruit. “The poor animals had had nothing to eat except the short allowance of hay we had hauled with us.”
   After traveling the Humboldt Valley for about 230 miles, Mrs. Frink wrote that they passed many dead animals and late in the day they arrived at an area called Big Meadows where they finally found some grazing for their livestock. Fortunately they found good grass for the next several miles. They stopped among many other immigrants all taking a short break to cut extra grass, make hay, and get ready to cross the dreaded Humboldt Desert, sometimes called the Forty Mile Desert. They expected to reach this dangerous stretch of trail—the worst of the entire journey—in the next two days. Today highway I-80 allows us to zip across this barren land in an easy hour of air-conditioned comfort, but I cannot make that trip without trying to imagine what it would be like in a covered wagon. Their only relief was to travel at night to avoid the August sun.

To add to the Frink’s anxiety were many stories of horrible things that had happened to previous travelers across this waterless wasteland. They heard stories about great losses of horses, mules, and oxen during the dangerous crossing. Naturally they had no certainty that their own animals would survive the crossing. By the time the Humboldt River reached this area the water became brackish and discolored from alkali. Margaret Frink described the water as having the color and taste of “dirty soap-suds.” Nevertheless, people and animals drank it out of necessity. They now must leave the river and travel about seventy miles without replenishing their water.
   They began the feared crossing of the immense dry lake bed long before sunrise and at six they stopped to rest for four hours. At ten o’clock they started again and soon began see horrible sights. Margaret wrote that “Horses, mules, and oxen suffering from heat, thirst and starvation staggered along until they fell and died. Both sides of the road for miles were lined with dead animals and abandoned wagons. Around them were strewn yokes, harnesses, guns, tools, bedding, clothing, cooking-utensils all in utter confusion.” Many immigrants had left everything except what they could carry on their backs and pushed ahead to try to save themselves.
   No one in the Frink group stopped to look or help. It was all anyone could do to save themselves and their animals. As they proceeded, the situation became more dreadful and dead animals became more numerous. The stench of their carcasses filled the hot August air.
   Careful forethought and planning saved the Frinks. They avoided the mistakes made by many immigrants who tried to travel too fast and exhausted their animals. The Frinks had cut a good supply of grass and made hay in the meadows before the sink. They carried a few gallons of water for each animal, traveled slowly and rested often. Many other immigrant parties traveled the worst part at night to avoid traveling in the heat.
   Surprisingly, the Frinks met a wagon carrying barrels of pure, sweet water from a spring about five miles south of the road. The Frinks bought one gallon of the water for $1.00 (about $33 in today’s dollars) and deemed it a refreshing luxury.
   At eleven o’clock at night on August 17th, the Frinks reached the Carson River after thirty-seven hours crossing the most treacherous desert of their journey. They had come through without any loss of animals or property, but thoroughly exhausted. The Carson River valley was abounding in good water and pastures, and those who reached this point were then only one hundred miles from Sutter’s Fort. Many of the immigrants at this point were clothed in tatters and many traveled on foot, having lost their animals. Most of the people they met were in ragged clothing and near starvation. Mrs. Frink told of one man they met who had lost everything. “He was without shoes and his feet were tied up in rags. The only food he had was one pint of corn meal. I made him a dish of gruel with some butter and other nourishing things.”
   Of course the Sierra Nevada Mountains still stood between them and their destination. Although the mountains require very strenuous labor they are not a serious hazard if crossed early enough. The Donner party had already demonstrated the potential danger with serious loss of life when they tried to cross the mountains in late October, 1846.
   Crossing the mountains involved steep, rough roads, and in many places deep, hard-packed snow still covered the ground. In especially steep places immigrants joined effort by loaning horses to one another so they could double team over the most difficult parts. In these places long ropes were tied to the tongue of the wagon and the men helped pull along with the horses. Others worked beside the wheels and pulled on the spokes. They also had to be prepared to block the wheels when the wagon stopped to prevent it from rolling back. In places the immigrants had to unharness their horses and hoist the wagons over a bluff while the horses walked around it on a path too rough or too narrow for wagons.
   By five o’clock that day they had reached the main ridge of the Sierra Nevada after ten hours of struggle. “The worst is now over,” wrote a relieved and exhausted Margaret Frink. Now they were in settled country again. Mrs. Frink wrote of passing trading posts with fruits and vegetables at exorbitant prices. They passed Sutter’s Fort just east of Sacramento. At last! They had arrived! Margaret noted that they had traveled 2418 miles in five months and seven days.
   In case you missed the first blog about the Frink’s housing plan, the following is a recap of Mr. Frink having a ready-to-assemble house built in Indiana and shipped to San Francisco:
   His (Mr. Frink’s) pre-cut lumber went by boat down the Wabash River to the Ohio, then to the Mississippi, all the way to New Orleans where it was loaded on a ship headed around the horn to San Francisco. Travel time by water from Indiana to San Francisco around the Horn in 1850 was at least one hundred days plus time for transferring the load from a river boat to a sailing ship.
   The pre-cut lumber for their house was waiting for them when they arrived in California and it was erected in a few days. Margaret Frink died in 1893 at the age of seventy-five. In 1897 Mr. Frink decided to have her extensive diary published as a book.

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Margaret Frink, Part 2

11/9/2020

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From Ft Kearny to the Continental Divide at South Pass.

Unknown couple taking a noon break on the trail in 1850.

Roger M. McCoy

Update: In the previous blog the Frinks left Martinsville, Indiana on the 27th of March, 1850. Two months later they began their trek westward along the Platte River over the prairies of Nebraska.

May 21, 1850, traveling the south bank of the Platte River west of Fort Kearney.
   “This morning some of the men in our company spotted a small herd of buffalo nearby and began to chase after them on horseback. When they returned Mr. Frink gave the men a harsh reprimand for exhausting the horses.” Even though it was bad for the horses, Mrs. Frink confessed she could not blame the men for the wanting the thrill of a chase. “The animation and excitement of the moment beat anything I ever saw, and I would not for anything have missed the sight of that great chase over that grand plain. Someone brought us a piece of buffalo steak, so we were not without a share of the prize.”
As they progressed on the plains, Margaret observed that, “Our chief inconvenience here is the want of firewood. There is no timber except the few cottonwoods and willows along the river. It often happens that we find hardly enough to cook our meals. Mr. Frink adopted the plan of gathering up all fragments of wood and hauling them with us until time of need.”
Margaret Frink occasionally wrote on the amount of work involved each day when they camped. Wagons, harness, and clothing all show signs of wear and tear, and whenever they stopped, especially an all-day stop on Sunday, many of these items must be mended. Also animals must be changed and guarded and “innumerable small things must looked after.”
   “Our organization has fallen to pieces. Those who were in so much of a hurry have driven ahead reducing our number to about twenty-five. Mr. Frink feels the only sure way to get to California with our animals still alive was to drive slowly.” Also the Frinks “found it best to travel in small parties on account of the scarcity of grass and water.”
   River crossings are full of danger and required great care. At one point Margaret Frink described her anxiety while crossing the Platte River.

Of all the excitements I have ever experienced the crossing
of the river was the greatest. …mule teams, horse teams,
ox teams, men on horseback, men wading and struggling
  against the quicksands and current, many of them with long
  poles in their hands feeling their way. Sometimes they would
  be in shallow water only up to their knees; then suddenly
  some unlucky one would plunge into four feet of water.
  …Our horses would sometimes be in water no more than
afoot deep; then in a moment they would go down to their
  collars. …when some wagons crowded in front of us during
a crossing we were compelled to stop for several minutes.
Our wagon at once began to settle and it took four men to
assist the horses to pull out. Where we crossed, the river
was a mile wide, and we were three-quarters of an hour
getting over. We are now nine-hundred miles from home.

   A few days after their river crossing, word came to the group that the grass was all burned off ahead of them. The fretful Mrs. Frink feared there would be nothing for the horses to eat. “What is to become of us…we are unable to go either forward or backward?” As often happened on the trail, this dilemma was based on a believable but untrue rumor. Nevertheless the incident illustrates just how much was at risk every day on the trail.
   Margaret writes of passing a Sioux village of about seventy tents. They came to the wagon train in a very friendly manner with food to trade. Mrs. Frink gave them a supply of needles and thread and some small mirrors. In trade she got fresh fish, buffalo, and antelope meat.
   On the next day their wagon train passed an important landmark for migrants—Courthouse Rock. The following day she reported seeing Chimney Rock in the distance ahead of them. She remarked that Chimney Rock was six miles away, but the air was so clear it seemed no more than a mile. These two famous landmarks are about twenty miles apart on the Platte River. Like hundreds of other migrants, Mr. Frink carved both their names on Chimney Rock.
   The Frinks progressed to Fort Laramie, now in eastern Wyoming, which had been purchased by the U.S. government from the American Fur Company. She noted the fort was bound by adobe walls fifteen feet high and 180 feet long on each side. Margaret wrote that this would the last outpost until they reached Fort Hall, about 500 miles farther west in present day Idaho. Mrs. Frink apparently had one of the available trail guidebooks from which she often quotes their exact distance traveled, the distance yet to go, their elevation, and occasionally the latitude and longitude of their location.
   In early June an accident occurred which caused much grief for Mrs. Frink. Her cherished sheet-iron stove, mentioned in the previous blog, was tied securely on the rear of their wagon, and she used it every day. Suddenly her good cookstove became a piece of junk. Surprisingly she wrote in a very understated tone considering how enraged she might have been. “Some careless person, in a hurry, drove his team up too close behind, and the pole of his wagon ran into the stove, smashing it and ruining it.” After that each day the Frinks had to dig a small fire trench and cook on the ground with her cooking pots set over it. She commented, “we found it a very good substitute for a stove.”
   The Frinks’ wagon train finally left the Platte River after following it until it turned abruptly south. They had a fifty-mile dry run toward the Sweetwater River which would take them to South Pass, the low and easy route over the
Rocky Mountains. The gap between the two rivers was covered with pools of alkali water, dried ponds crusted with salt or soda several inches thick, some sagebrush, but no grass. “The horses and our wagon wheels broke through the crust with each step as if it were ice.” The salt crust slowed their progress to a crawl. During this bad stretch of land a mid-June snowstorm blew in, “At dark while I was cooking supper a heavy storm of wind and snow came up. There was no shelter and we ate our supper while it was snowing and blowing” The next day was bright and sunny. “We snowballed each other till ten o’clock…”
   Another day’s travel brought them to another major landmark on the trail, Independence Rock—a dome-shaped feature about one-third of a mile long and 130 feet high. Several years earlier a party of immigrants happened to pass this site on the Fourth of July and so named this massive granite rock rising from a flat plain. The massive rock became a record of immigrant names with “hundreds of names painted with black paint made of gunpowder and bacon grease.”
   In late June a man named Mr. Avery became impatient with the rate of progress. Mr. Avery felt he could get to California sooner on foot than by going at the plodding rate of the wagons. He took as much food, blankets, and clothing as he could strap on his back and started alone toward California (1500 miles ahead) - with hope and a great amount of pluck. One might say dumb pluck! Margaret Frink made no further mention of Mr. Avery in her diary, but one can guess several possible outcomes for him. There is little likelihood that Avery could finish the trek alone, perhaps he eventually gave up and joined another wagon train. The other possible outcomes are more dire: starvation, thirst, exhaustion, or capture.
   On June 24th the Frinks finally reached the famous South Pass and crossed the Continental Divide. The approach to South Pass is a long gentle slope and the divide is “so much like a prairie that it is not easy to tell when we reached the exact line of the divide.” At the summit an American flag was flying to mark the private post office established by James Estelle so immigrants could send letters to family and friends back home. This small post office along with Fort Kearny and Fort Laramie were the only outposts of the United States west of Omaha. Margaret again expressing her feeling of separation and loneliness wrote, “to see the old flag once more strongly reminded us of home.” The Frink’s group decided to celebrate their arrival at the Great Divide. “Music from a violin with tin-pan accompaniment contributed to the general merriment of a grand frolic.” Perhaps they danced to the violin/tin-pan combo and drank a toast with their stash of cider. That afternoon Margaret wrote letters to friends which the postmaster sent back to the States by the next messenger. Margaret had to pay $1.00 each to send her letters. One dollar in 1850 is estimated to be equivalent to $33.37 today—a dear price for a letter.
   The next day they “began the long descent to the Pacific Ocean 1,433 miles away.”
TO BE CONTINUED

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Margaret Frink 1

10/23/2020

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Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory in June 1858, eight years after Margaret Frink passed through. Photo by Samuel C. Mills

The distance covered by Margaret and Ledyard Frink from Martinsville, Indiana to Fort Kearny, was just under 800 miles.

Roger M. McCoy

Margaret Frink, aged thirty-two, set off for California in 1850 from Martinsville, Indiana, with her husband Ledyard Frink and a twelve-year-old neighbor boy. In the next two blogs I hope to cover the essence of Margaret Frink’s twenty-three weeks on the trail to Sacramento.
   Everyone was eager to get to California before the gold was all gone. As they neared Fort Kearny, in present day Nebraska, where two branches of the trail converged, Margaret Frink wrote. ”I thought, in my excitement, that if one-tenth of these people got ahead of us there would be nothing left in California worth picking up.”

Gold vs. Grass
   The vast number of people and animals presented a major problem with the availability of grass along the way. Those who started earliest got the grass first. In addition to grazing the animals as they progressed, the early travelers also harvested grass and made hay to carry with them in the wagons to help them through barren areas. Getting to the gold first was a desire for wealth, but getting the grass first was a matter of survival. If animals died in the arid land of Nevada, the people must abandon most of their possessions and continue on foot, perhaps with a makeshift two-wheel cart improvised from their wagon.
   One witness to this massive migration, Major Osborne Cross, wrote that in the few weeks between late April and June 1st of 1849 four thousand wagons carrying approximately 16,000 people passed Fort Kearny. Major Cross noted that this number included only those traveling along the south bank of the Platte River, and that there were also substantial numbers traveling along the north bank. One historian studied the migrations and concluded that approximately 500,000 people traveled along the Platte River during the years from 1841 to 1866 heading for Oregon, California, and Utah. This means that about 2 percent of the American population at that time became migrants. More than two thousand of those migrants kept diaries or later wrote memoirs of their trip experience.
   My friend Michael Yeager compares the eager anticipation for some people when moving to a new place versus the anxiety for others of change and leaving home and friends. He uses the term “nomads” for those who feel comfortable with, or even welcome, a change of location. Many of the migrants certainly were nomads and America soon became a nation of nomads.

Risks vs. Rewards
   Most migrants were optimists concerning the opportunities ahead in California, but there were instances of strong pessimism and anxiety. A Mrs. Simpson was so apprehensive about the journey that she made burial shrouds for each member of her family before beginning her journey. A few families carried precut boards for coffins that could be assembled as needed. Everyone recognized the dangers but believed that the likelihood of success was worth the risk. The dangers were well known. Diarists mention accidental gunshot wounds from hunting or while placing a rifle in the wagon. Children sometimes walked too close to a wagon wheel and were run over. Drownings sometimes occurred during river crossings. Poisoning from bad food, toxic plants, or cholera from contaminated water could be fatal. One effect the journey had on many travelers was a feeling of sadness or depression due to leaving their home and friends behind. Despite all these horrors most migrants reached their destination safely.
   One of the travelers’ greatest anxieties was attacks by the native tribes of the Great Plains. These fears were fueled by publicized paintings, dime novels, and newspaper stories. Although serious incidents occurred, usually involving attempted horse-theft at night, most contacts with Native Americans were peaceful and typically involved trading food for manufactured items like knives, rope, or various other items. Meanwhile back to the experience of Margaret Frink from Indiana.

The Frinks Go For the Gold
   Margaret Frink kept such an extensive diary that her husband had it printed as a book after her death in 1893 with this ponderous title:

“JOURNAL of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold-Seekers
Under the guidance of MR. LEDYARD FRINK During a journey
across the plains from Martinsville, Indiana to Sacramento,
California from March 30, 1850 to September 7, 1850. From the
Original Diary of the trip kept by MRS. MARGARET A. FRINK.”

   Margaret and her husband Ledyard, whom she always called “Mr. Frink,” watched in Indiana while neighbors and family members headed for California. The letters sent from her friends in California told glowingly about “the delightful climate” (tempting—she was in Indiana you know) and the “abundance of gold.” This news was enough to give Mr. and Mrs. Frink a case of California fever. They had a successful farm, many friends and family ties, and they had no awareness of the difficulties faced by those who traveled to the gold fields, but they wanted to go. Neighbors tried to dissuade them, but the Frinks sold the farm and left it all behind the following spring (1850). They had no children, but a neighbor’s twelve-year-old son wanted to go with them and his parents agreed.
   Mr Frink heard from letters that lumber cost $400 per thousand board feet in California. Because he could buy it in Indiana for $4 per thousand, he decided to buy in Indiana all the lumber needed for a California house. He bought a house plan and hired carpenters to cut all the lumber to dimensions specified by the plan, and sent the ready-to-assemble house by ship to San Francisco. (Remember he had a lot of cash from selling the farm.) His pre-cut lumber went by boat down the Wabash River to the Ohio, then to the Mississippi, all the way to New Orleans where it was loaded on a ship headed around Cape Horn to San Francisco. Travel time by water from Indiana and around the Horn to San Francisco in 1850 was at least one hundred days, plus time for transferring the load from a river boat to a sailing ship.
   The Frinks bought a new wagon with storage spaces designed especially for the long trip. They had a rubber air-mattress and a feather bed with feather pillows. The inside of the wagon was lined with green cloth to make it “pleasant and soft to the eye.” The green lining also had four large pouches on each side to hold various personal items—“looking-glasses, combs, brushes, and so on.” Her prized possession was a “small sheet-iron cooking stove, which was lashed on behind the wagon.” They carried “plenty of hams and bacon, apples, peaches, rice, coffee, beans, flour, corn-meal, crackers, sea-biscuit (hardtack), butter, and lard. Mrs. Frink’s diary covers every day of her trip in well-written detail.
   In the middle of May, and about six weeks from home, the Frinks finally crossed the Missouri River by ferry. They crossed into Nebraska just below the mouth of the Platte River, about ten miles south of present day Omaha. At this point they began to meet other people traveling to California and Margaret observed that the “wide expanse of the great plains is before us, we feel like mere specks on the face of the earth.” This was their first day out of the United States as Nebraska was not yet a territory.
   At this point the Frinks began to realize the magnitude and perils of the country ahead of them. Printed leaflets warned of dangers from native tribes ahead and Margaret Frink commented on their defenseless situation having only one rifle and one pistol. She wrote that they became aware of the importance of joining with other groups headed west. Many people told her there was nothing to fear, but she had become very uneasy.
   After traveling through the first day her group spotted several native horsemen on a nearby hilltop. They immediately circled the wagons to form a corral and prepared their camp for defense against attack. Margaret was in a high state of anxiety and awake, fully dressed, all night to make sure the guards stayed awake. Meanwhile she felt bothered that Mr. Frink could be sleeping so soundly, and she roused him occasionally. Like most cases of worry nothing actually happened. The next morning their small group encountered a large wagon train and joined them for the remainder of the trip.
   As they progressed westward along the Platte River, Mrs. Frink wrote that the country was “so level that we could see long trains of white-topped wagons for many miles. It seemed to me that I had never seen so many human beings in all my life.” Fearing there would be nothing left for them in California Margaret Frink urged greater speed in their travel, but her husband argued that moving faster would exhaust the horses and they would never arrive in California. Margaret fretted that every blade of grass would be eaten by the thousands of mules, horses, and oxen ahead of them. But “worse than all,” she wrote, “there would be only a few barrels of gold left for us when we got to California.” Margaret had the notion from friends’ letters that some people actually found gold by the barrel. By this time about seven weeks and over 700 miles had passed since they left the farm in Indiana. They had reached Fort Kearny in the middle of present-day Nebraska, and they still had many miles to go.
To Be Continued

Sources
California Trail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Trail.

Holmes, Kenneth L. Best of Covered Wagon Women. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2008.

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The Inca's Royal Roads

10/4/2020

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The two main Incan roads covering the empire from present day Colombia to Chile and Argentina.

One of the remaining segments of the Incan mountain road. Wikimedia

Roger M. McCoy

The term empire may bring to mind the great realm of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, or more recently, the British Empire. Yet there were many empires that seldom get mentioned, such as the Mongol Empire of Genghis Kahn, Chinese Dynastic Empires, and the Persian Empire, among others. Perhaps the empire least likely to come to mind is the empire of the Incas in South America.
A vast civilization known as the Inca Empire covered much of western South America with its center of power in the city of Cuzco, Peru. The Incas came to the Cuzco Valley in the early 1200’s A.D. and began acquiring land. By the time the Spanish invaded in 1532 the Inca Empire covered what is now Peru, Ecuador, most of Bolivia, and parts of Chile and Argentina.
Their empire functioned well without money or markets. Instead of money the Incas used a barter system to exchange goods and services. The exchange system worked among individuals, groups, and ultimately the Inca rulers. The people paid taxes in the form of labor obligations to the empire. The Inca rulers reciprocated by granting access to land and goods. The rulers also threw big feasts annually for all their subjects to enjoy.
When the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived in 1526, he demanded that the Inca ruler, Atahualpa, accept the Spanish king and convert to Christianity. When the ruler refused their demands, the Spanish took him hostage and forced the population to accept Spanish jurisdiction. If this sounds familiar it’s because the same thing happened to the Aztecs in Mexico.

The Royal Roads
As the Incan Empire expanded they, like other empires, soon needed a road network to maintain their power and provide a communication throughout. The Incas built roads and flourished despite having no wheeled vehicles or draft animals to pull plows or carts. The llama, which is the only large animal native to the area, is suitable as a pack animal, but not for pulling loads. They had no iron and no writing system. Yet they created a great empire despite these disadvantages.

Their road network was a web of about 25,000 miles of the western coastal area in South America from present day Columbia and Ecuador into northern Chile and Argentina. The Incas built two primary north-south roads with many tributary and connecting roads. One of the main roads ran along the Pacific coast for 3,100 miles and the other more traveled road was built inland with branches into the mountains covering about 3,500 miles. The city of Cuzco is the center of the Incan road network with roads radiating in the four cardinal directions. The sixteenth-century Spanish historian Garcilaso de la Vega wrote that “Cuzco in the language of the Incas means navel…the Earth’s navel.”
The Incan roads were well-planned and engineered, and can properly be compared to the Roman roads built 1,000 years earlier connecting all of western Europe. The construction using only manual labor required a great amount of time and effort. Many of the roads were paved with stone and in steep terrain they were stair-stepped. The Incas built bridges, retaining walls, and provided for water drainage…all the refinements you would expect in a highway today. The Incan roads provided movement of information, goods, and armies…all with no wheeled vehicles or draft animals in a land of about twelve million people.
The north road from Cuzco to Quito, Ecuador, was the most important which is reflected in its width, ranging from 10 feet to 50 feet. The north road also had larger buildings and other facilities along the way.
Along the roads the Incas built buildings, called tambos, at intervals of a one-day walking distance. The buildings were stocked with provisions and provided quarters for travelers and the running messengers who ran up to 140 miles per day (whew) carrying oral messages which they related to the next messenger who then ran to the next station. Buildings for storage and distribution of goods were located at intervals, and near frontiers of their empire the Incas built fortresses.
In 1553, Pedro Cieza de León, wrote a history and description of Peru, Crónicas del Perú. His chronicles had this to say about the Incan roads.

I believe that, since the memory of people, it has not been
  read of such a greatness as this road, made through deep
  valleys and high peaks, snow covered mountains, marshes
  of water, live rock, and beside furious rivers; in some parts
  it was flat and paved, on the slopes well made. …Everywhere
  it was clean, swept clear of debris, full of dwellings, warehouses
  for valuable goods, temples of the Sun, and relay stations that
  were on this road.

During the Spanish colonial period the Incan roads fell into disuse. The Spanish brought horses, oxen, and wheeled carts, which were of limited use on the steep or stair-stepped Incan roads. Soon most of the roads were abandoned. Most of the roadways were destroyed over time and only one-quarter of the roads are still visible today.

Sources
Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before                Columbus. New York: Knopf. 2005.

McEwen, Gordon F. The Incas: New Perspectives. New York. W. W. Norton    & Company. 2008.

Inca Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire

Inca Road System. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_road_system

The Inca Road System (Ancient History Encyclopedia)
   https://www.ancient.eu/article/757/the-inca-road-system/

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Earliest Royal Roads

9/13/2020

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The Via Regia and the Via Imperii, along with several branch roads, connected many of the economic centers of Europe from the 8th century C.E.

Persian Empire in 6th century BCE. Trail is shown in red.

Nakasendo trail is shown in purple. Artist, Steve Stankiewicz.

Roger M McCoy

   Rulers of empires had good reason to develop roads to various parts of the realm: to nurture trade within and beyond their empires and to maintain control by movement of armies as necessary.
   Both motives applied to the Caminos Reales described in an earlier blog. For example, Spain and later Mexico needed to make sure all the territories in Tejas and America del Norte recognized that the central authority over them was in Mexico City. Furthermore they needed to provide a convenient route for transfer of goods in both directions. Likewise one of the oldest trails is the Silk Road used by tradesmen carrying goods from East Asia to Persia, Syria, and later to Europe (see blog 4/21/2019). Other trails were developed by a king or emperor and given the name Royal Road, and four examples in Europe and Asia will round out the image of trading trails.
   In Europe many short trails eventually became two long routes designated as Royal Roads--Via Regia and Via Imperii. The Via Regia eventually reached from San Juan de Compostela, Spain to Moscow, Russia. The Via Imperii went from the Baltic Sea to Rome. They are called Royal Roads because they were sanctioned by the Holy Roman Emperor. Tolls were collected at various points along the way and some protection was provided for travelers.

Via Regia (Royal Road)
   Although the European route known as Via Regia began in the eighth century A.D. the first written mention of it was in 1252. The route was important for its major economic importance linking east and west Europe. From the west came Flemish woolen blankets, from the east came wood, pelts, wax, and honey. The middle region provided an indigo plant, valued as a dark blue dye, as well as the mining products of nearby mountains. Indigo was among the earliest dyes to be used for textile dyeing and was highly valued by early Greeks and Romans.
   The road was repeatedly used by conquering or retreating armies, and Napoleon’s army trekked the Via Regia during its disastrous return from Russia during the winter of 1812. Today parts of the route are followed by major highways in Germany and Poland. Although the route has been altered somewhat as transportation methods and population pattern changed, the same corridor is now used by the railroad and highways through Germany and Poland.

Via Imperii
   Another important trade route went from Rome across the Brenner Pass in Switzerland to the then-German city of Stettin (today the Polish city of Szczecin). Stettin, a port on the Baltic sea, and several other major cities along this route had “staple rights.” These rights required merchants transporting goods to unload their goods and make them available to local customers for three days before packing up and moving on. This right became extremely important for the economic prosperity of major cities, which became known as market towns, and many today have a weekly market day in the town square.

The Persian Royal Road
Another important trading route designated by a king extended from Susa (in present day western Iran) to Sardis, which is now a ruin near present day Salihli, in western Turkey. This important road covered a distance of more than 1600 miles. King Darius established this road during the first Persian Empire (called the Achaemenid Empire) by developing existing ancient trails in the fifth century BCE. As with other Royal Roads this one improved communication and trade throughout the immense Persian empire.
   Like an early version of the Pony Express, mounted couriers traveled from Susa to Sardis in nine days—a journey that took ninety days on foot. Herodotus, a contemporary Greek historian, wrote, "There is nothing in the world that travels faster than these Persian couriers." In his praise for these messengers he said, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Readers will recognize this statement that became the creed of the United States Postal Service.
   Caravan travel is much slower than a mounted courier and over such a great distance usually took months to complete. For that reason King Darius built many stopping points called caravanserai with accommodations for men and camels to rest. Caravanserai is an early Persian word meaning caravan palace and denotes a building with an enclosed court. In Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean lands such a stopping point was called a Han. Caravanserai also existed along the Silk Road (see blog of 4/21/2019).
   Herodotus continued his praise of the road and its many stopping points. He wrote, "Now the true account of the road in question is the following: Royal stations exist along its whole length, and many excellent caravanserai; and throughout, it traverses an inhabited tract, and is free from danger.”

Nakasendo Trail in Japan.

  In the seventeenth century Japan underwent many cultural changes. One major change was the renovation of Japan's thousand-year-old highway system. An important part of this renovation was the designation of five routes which became the official roads of the feudal lords (daimyo) and military dictators (shoguns). This road network provided greater communications needed to stabilize and rule the country. Until the establishment of these formal trade routes, many shorter routes existed between towns, but not as a single network. One of these five roads was the Nakasendo, which stretched between Edo (now Tokyo), the center of shogun power, through the central mountain ranges to the ancient capital, Kyoto.
   One characteristic of the Nakasendo Trail is the beautiful landscape that it traverses. A Japanese poet, Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) walked the Nakasendo Trail at night and wrote a Haiku of his impression of its beauty.
                   Flowing right in
                   to the Kiso Mountains:
                   the Milky Way.

Sources:
Schutyser, Tom. Caravanserai: Traces, Places, Dialogue in the Middle East.
   5Continents. 2019.

Caravanserai. Retrieved from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravanserai.

Leipzig. Retrieved from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig

Nakasendo Trail. Retrieved from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakasendo

Perrottet, Tony. The Way of The Shogun. Smithsonian Magazine. vol 51. no. 04.            July 2020. pg 72.

Royal Road Persia to Turkey. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road.

Via Imperii. Retrieved from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Imperii.

Via Regia. Retrieved from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Regia.

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Crossing Panama

8/22/2020

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The passage across Panama was only one-third the distance around South America.

Roger McCoy

In 1502 Columbus made one last effort to find a passage through that annoying land obstruction that kept him from the real Indies. He reached Central America and sailed down the coast from Honduras to Panama but found no water passage westward.

If Columbus had not needed to reach safety quickly due to his rotting ships, he might have tried to talk with the local natives in Panama and discovered how close he was to the Pacific Ocean. Eleven years later Balboa did talk with the natives.

Vasco Núñez de Balboa came to the Panama coast in 1513 (see Explorer’s Tales 5/20/2014). He made a forty-five mile crossing by hacking his way through dense forests, swamps, across lakes, and over mountains with native guides. This gave him the distinction of being the first European to cross the Isthmus and see the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean. He then bestowed the name Pacific to this vast sea and claimed all lands and islands touching it for Spain. Of course he had no idea that all of east Asia bordered the same ocean. Needless to say, other world powers over the the next centuries payed no attention to his claim. In the mid-eighteenth century Captain James Cook actually sailed the Pacific Ocean several times and claimed for England almost everything he saw.

The Spanish made soon made good use of Balboa’s discovery of a short land route between the two big oceans. When Pizarro found treasures of gold in Peru, the Spanish took their loot by sea to Panama, trekked on foot across the Isthmus and reloaded it onto ships bound for Spain

Balboa’s trip across the wilds of Panama   served a purpose much greater than claiming the entire Pacific Ocean and all the lands that border it. He also showed the world that the two continents blocking the path to the Orient had a narrow place only about forty-five miles wide. Many years later when the west coast of North America became populated and California became a magnet during the gold rush, ships still had to make the long and difficult voyage around South America’s Cape Horn. It was easy to see that a ship traveling from New York to San Francisco could save almost 8,000 miles and five months of travel if they could cross the Isthmus of Panama.

When the California gold rush began, fortune seekers tried all routes and means of transport possible to get to the gold fields. Many arrived at the Caribbean Sea coast of Panama hoping to cross somehow and board another ship to California. At first there were no trails and no transportation infrastructure across the Isthmus. The old Spanish trail had been abandoned and reclaimed by the jungle and only dugout canoes existed for local trade on the Chagres River. People tried desperately to find a way through the tropical jungle just as the first Spanish explorers did 350 years earlier. Those who could afford it resorted to an expensive trip in a dugout canoe. Although portage was needed in some places, they eventually arrived at Las Cruces on the Pacific coast and then crowded aboard a steamer bound for San Francisco. Crossing the Isthmus at that time for ordinary travelers was possible only on foot or by mule.

One of the venturesome wealthy travelers who crossed Panama in that era was Jessie Benton Frémont, wife of John C. Frémont and the daughter of a well-known Senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton. She was a socially prominent woman who chose to shorten her trip from New York to San Francisco by crossing the Isthmus in 1849, six years before the railroad was built. She noted that U.S. Army surveyors were beginning to map the route for a railroad.

Jessie Fremont kept a diary of her entire trip and later wrote a book, “A Year of American Travel,” in which she related her experience crossing the Isthmus. She described changing from large ship to small river boat, of which she wrote, “The little tender on which we were loaded was like stepping down into a toy.”

After eight miles the river became smaller and passengers were transferred to dugout canoes and continued up the river. Mrs. Frémont, however, managed avoid the canoe ride and wrangled a ride in a somewhat bigger boat with a responsible crew. She wrote, “It took a long time… we made only a few miles each day.” She indicated that each day was full of “novelty and interest.” But when night came in the tropical forest there rose “a hideous, confusing rush of sound.”

When they could go no farther by boats they loaded their trunks on mules. At each stage of the journey Jessie became more aware of the strangeness of the place but also its breathtaking beauty.

The whole thing was like a nightmare… The nights were odious with their dank mists and noises; but there was compensation in the sunrise when you looked down from a mountain into an undulating sea of magnificent blooms sending up clouds of perfume into the freshness of the morning. … And from the last of the peaks we saw, as Balboa had seen before us, the Pacific at our feet.

Jessie Frémont made this difficult trip despite an illness from lung congestion which began during her voyage from New York to Panama. She described the illness as a danger to her life and worried that no leeches or croton oil (a purgative) were available.

Among many others who made the Panama crossing were the famous Siamese twins Chang and Eng. They departed New York City on November 12th, 1860 by steamship, crossed Panama by train, and arrived in San Francisco twenty-four days later on December 6th.

Despite the hardships, the journey across the Isthmus of Panama was faster than the overland trek across western North America or the voyage around the Horn. It took about two months to get to San Francisco by crossing the Isthmus compared to six months from the east coast across North America overland with oxen or sailing around Cape Horn. The great demand for travel across the Isthmus became an opportunity for the railroad builders to step in and provide transport across Panama.

American businessmen financed construction of a railroad beginning in 1850 on the Caribbean side near the present site of Colón. Because the first six miles of the route were swampland, progress was very slow and expensive. Much of the construction had to be supported by pilings with rock backfill. A greater problem was illness among the workers. An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 deaths from tropical diseases occurred during the railroad construction, particularly malaria, yellow fever, cholera, and dengue fever. Mosquitos were the carrier of the malaria, yellow fever, and dengue viruses, and water contamination was the source of the cholera bacteria. Unfortunately little was known about these tropical diseases or their means of transmission so treatment was ineffective.

In late 1851, after more than a year, railroad construction reached the the city of Gatún, a distance of only ten miles from the Atlantic coast. The construction company’s initial funds of one million U.S. dollars were expended, but they created a cash flow by offering rail passenger service between Colón and Gatún.

The Panama Railroad Company finally finished the route in 1855, at a point a few miles from Panama City on the Pacific side and the completed line immediately attracted passengers. This forty-seven mile railroad gave a tremendous incentive to travelers to take the Panama route and it was an immediate success. One traveler reporting on his trip wrote of a “groggery” at the terminus where passengers could buy bad brandy before finishing the last few miles in wagons drawn by mules. An American newspaper published a celebratory article titled “The Great Enterprise” in February, 1855. This excerpt shows its gist:

On the approach of the train, they [the native population] seemed stupefied with amazement. …The impression upon the entire population, on the appearance of the train at the city, was of the most exciting character, and after the first paroxysm of wonder was over, the people crowded about the train so close as scarcely to leave room for it to move upon the track. The transit trip can now be made daily in from five to six hours, and but a short time will probably elapse before trains will run regularly in four hours.

After the railroad the next big effort fifty years later was the Panama Canal. Today the railroad still hauls large amounts of freight from coast to coast but has one big disadvantage—the freight has to be off-loaded and reloaded onto ships at each end. With today’s containerized freight system this effort is minimized. From the beginning the railroad had this procedure. How great it would be if a shipload of freight could cross the Isthmus without unloading! Hence the idea for a canal--one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken.

The story of the Panama Canal is one of overcoming endless hurdles. France began the canal in 1881 but stopped in 1894, partly because of difficult construction problems but mainly due to the extremely high mortality rate among workers. The construction problem was a result of their intent to make a sea level canal similar to the Suez Canal. The terrain simply was not favorable for a sea level route.

In 1903 Panama signed a treaty granting the United States rights to build and administer the Panama Canal Zone. The next year the U.S. purchased existing equipment and railroad from France for forty million dollars and immediately began building locks and a lake. They also completed an extensive sanitation system, including city water systems, fumigation of buildings, spraying of insect-breeding areas with oil, installation of mosquito netting and window screens, and elimination of stagnant water. Even with that effort about 5,600 workers died of disease and accidents during the U.S. construction of the canal. It was finally completed and opened in 1914.

Beginning with Balboa the Isthmus of Panama has been an important link in global transportation for more than 500 years. The routes across the jungles of Panama played an important role in the Spanish Empire, the development of the United States of America, and the global economy.

Sources
Frémont, Jessie Benton. A year of American travel. New York: Harper and
   Brothers. 1878
On Historic Routes: Exploring the ways that changed our world. The
Isthmus of Panama. Retrieved from website: on-historic-routes.com/
featured-routes/isthmus-of-panama
Panama Canal. Retrieved from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal.

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The Pony Express

8/2/2020

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Pony Express route from St. Joseph to Sacramento.

Pony Express rider and the new telegraph lines. Artist, George Ottinger, 1867.

The mochila fit over the saddle and could be easily transferred to a fresh horse in a few seconds.

“The Last Run of the Pony Express of 1861” Artist George Ottinger, (1833-1917) George M. Ottinger, Public Domain

Roger M. McCoy

On the fourth of April, 1860 the stagecoach lines were completely snowed in across the Sierra Nevada range. A lone horseman bent low on his mount pushed eastward through the blinding blizzard. Occasionally the rider had to dismount to break a path through the deep drifts. As the day progressed the horse and rider began to descend the east slope of the range and eventually they had easier travel. At nightfall they followed a trail through a densely forested canyon until at last the rider saw lights of a town and the station ahead. Stiff and cold to the bone, the rider quickly dismounted and the station operator had a fresh horse saddled and standing by. The rider mounted with his mochila of mail and galloped toward the next station fourteen miles farther east where a new horse and different rider were waiting. The operator transferred the mochila and the new rider took off in to the night.
   This description is an imaginary account of the first eastbound Pony Express rider crossing the mountains on his way from Sacramento, California to Carson City, Nevada. The mail left Sacramento at 2 A.M. on the fourth, passed through Salt Lake City just before midnight on the seventh, and arrived in St. Joseph, Missouri at 4 P.M. on the thirteenth. The mail continued by train and four days later arrived in New York City. The nation stood in awe that mail had travel across the continent in only fourteen days, and only ten days across the “Great American Desert.”
   The men who worked the California gold fields lived in isolation from the rest of the country. Despite their rough existence of hard work, booze, and women, they still hoped to get rich and return home. They demanded overland mail service with the Midwest. The first effort was a forerunner of the Pony Express. In April of 1851 the U.S. government made a contract with two men, George Chorpenning and Absolam Woodward to carry mail once a month by horse and rider between Sacramento and Salt Lake City through Nevada along the Humboldt River. This 900 mile route, initially called the “jackass mail,” began in May 1851 and took sixteen days, and much of the time involved clearing a way through snow in the Sierras. Crossing the Sierras and following the Humboldt in winter proved such a time-consuming hardship that they began using that direct route only in the summer and changing to the Southern Route during the winter. The Southern Route followed the Butterfield Stage Route through Arizona. After four years customers demanded a return to the much shorter and faster Sierra Nevada route. Even in summer, crossing Nevada was fraught with danger and hardship from poor grass, poor water, and “an inhospitable and poisoned waste.”
   In 1855 Congress began to feel pressure to institute a more frequent mail service to California. The contract went to three private operators, William Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B. Waddell, three men who knew their way through government channels. They soon began the enterprise that became the Pony Express. The concept was not new. Relay systems of couriers had been used in ancient Persia and in the empire of Genghis Khan. What distinguished the Pony Express was not the novelty but the efficiency and brilliant execution. The very image of the brave riders speeding through dark and storm and danger to make a fast, weekly mail service immediately captured American hearts.
   During the winter of 1859-60 the newly formed company established stations at 10 to 12 mile intervals along the 1,424 miles between Sacramento, California and St. Joseph, Missouri. Between Sacramento and Salt Lake City, Utah they had to build new stations. Eastward from Salt Lake City the company often used existing businesses willing to become stations. Before the first riders started riding, the company had invested about $100,000 ($3.1 million today) in the new venture. They bought five hundred of the best horses and manned 190 stations. Wherever possible the stations were constructed near military forts for added protection. Fort Kearny, Nebraska, Fort Laramie, Fort Casper, and Fort Bridger, Wyoming and Fort Bowie, Arizona are a few examples of forts near the Pony Express route.
   There were two-hundred station tenders to care for the horses and eighty seasoned riders for runs of seventy-five to one-hundred miles a day. The plan was to dispatch mail between Sacramento and St. Joseph once a week.
Each rider had a route of 80 to 100 miles on which to travel back and forth. While traveling his route a rider would change horses eight to ten times during the six to eight hour ride. At the end of his route he passed the mochila to a fresh rider who would then traverse the next segment of the route. The first rider would wait at the station for the next rider traveling in the opposite direction, then transfer the mochila (see illustration) to a fresh horse and return to the beginning of his route. The horses usually traveled at a trot or canter at 10 to 15 miles per hour, but at times they were pushed to gallop up to 25 miles per hour.
   The initial charge for letters was $5 ($155 today) per half ounce. With such a high price the customers were mainly governments, banks, and businesses. Letters were written on tissue paper with no envelopes, to lighten the load. The company soon found that the number of customers was too low to sustain a business that was in the red from the first day. Russell, Majors, and Waddell had hoped to establish the feasibility of such a year-round courier service, and that Congress would be persuaded to subsidize a daily Pony Express service, but that never came to pass.
   The Pony Express service came at a high price for the riders crossing the “Great Desert.” Besides the risk of crossing arid land there was hostility among the Paiutes, the Washoes, and the Shoshoni tribes over the intrusion into their lands. Some riders were attacked, as were relay stations. Often a rider arrived at a station only to find it in flames. With all this excitement they received high compensation—up to $125 ($3800 today) per month, very good pay for the time—unskilled laborers about $1.00 per day. Replacement of burned relay stations cost the company $75,000 ($2.3 million today). Despite all this danger only one rider is known to have been killed by raiding tribesmen. Also, reports show that two men froze to death.
   It was the threat of hostile native attacks and the split-second schedules that gave the Pony Express such a revered image in the American mind. It was clearly an unsustainable operation financially and only by its romantic image could such a short lived venture still resonate today. The Pony Express had one great moment in 1861 when riders traversed the westward route in a record seven days and seventeen hours to bring a copy of Lincoln's inaugural address to California. The Pony Express was by far the most effective way to communicate cross-country at the time.
   After eighteen months Russell, Majors, and Waddell recognized that the Pony Express was not going to be subsidized by the government. Their expenses are estimated to have been about $500,000 greater than income. It was not, however, just the financial ruin that killed the Pony Express. The end was made inevitable by the construction of lines by the Overland Telegraph Company, which merged with another telegraph company and changed its name to Western Union.
   The Pony Express played an oversized role in the popular imagination, considering its brief existence. Launched in April, 1860 it operated for eighteen months before the first trans-continental telegraph line was completed. The Pony Express officially shuttered on October 26, 1861.

Sources
Morgan, Dale L. The Humboldt: Highroad of the West. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press.1943.
wikipedia.org/wiki/George Chorpenning
wikipedia.org/wiki/Pony Express
history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-pony-express
mentalfloss.com/article/537885/facts-about-pony-express

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The Middle Passage: Slave Trade Across the Atlantic

7/10/2020

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African captives being loaded and shackled on a slave ship. Anti-slavery Internationa

Roger M. McCoy

Old trading routes carried many commodities as discussed in the blog on “The Silk Road.” Usually we think of these commodities as high value goods, such as silk and spices, with sufficient profit to pay for the long journeys. It was also common for one of the commodities to be humans, and by the early seventeenth century (1619) humans were transported as captured slaves from West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to North America and South America.
Slavery has existed in many cultures dating back before recorded history. The practice of owning another human began with the emergence of the stratified societies of civilization, probably about 11,000 years ago. Slavery appears very rarely in hunter-gatherer societies having little or no social stratification.
Captains of seventeenth-century slave ships acquired African slaves at various points on the African coast from Arab and West African traders. In the beginning traders brought slaves to Spain, Portugal, the island of Madeira, and the Canary Islands. When Europeans settled the Americas they built large plantations of labor intensive crops such as sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco, and this in turn created a greater need for captive slaves from Africa in the New World.
Slaves were usually captured through tribal warfare and sold to African slave dealers on the coasts, who acted as middlemen selling slaves to the European ship owners. African coastal societies benefitted from a steady supply of European textiles, ironware, and firearms—all in exchange for African captives. The firearms led to more forced capture resulting in more slaves sold to the dealers on the coast. This arrangement made it possible for ship owners to have a steady supply of slaves sufficient to fill their lower decks. From this it is clear that the Africans were considered nothing more than cargo for the next ships. As New World settlement expanded, Brazil, several Caribbean countries, American southern states, and African kingdoms all prospered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of the slave trade. Their economies relied heavily on slave labor.
Warfare and kidnapping clearly had a damaging effect on the populations that were victimized by the slave trade. Many African communities tried to defend themselves from slave raiders. Others retreated to more remote and defensible geographical regions to escape attacks and capture. This upheaval dispersed or destroyed many native African communities forever.
Nearly one-third of all transatlantic slave voyages originated in British ports. They sailed from England to Africa with merchandise, then transported ship loads of Africans to Caribbean islands before ruling the trade illegal in 1807. During that period slave trading became essential to the well-being of the British empire. Among other countries transporting slaves across the Atlantic, Portugal ranked nearly as high as Britain, followed closely by France. Some American ships also carried slaves.
The Atlantic voyage from West Africa to the New World was the middle segment of a three-part voyage with a different cargo on each part. First, ships left a European port with various manufactured goods such as cloth, whiskey, and metal utensils like pots, pans, and knives. These goods were taken to West Africa and traded for slaves, then taken to destinations in South America, the Caribbean, and North America. In those ports the ships would load sugar, tobacco, cotton, and rum, and begin the third leg of their trading voyage back to Europe. Much of the success of the these three-part voyages required an astute captain with the savvy to handle business deals, make sure the slaves survived, and return a handsome profit for the financiers back home.



      If the Atlantic served as the slave trade’s central artery, the networks of roads, paths, and waterways in the Americas that transported enslaved people from ports to plantations, mines, and cities were the capillaries—much the same as the slave routes on the African interior had brought them to the coastal port cities.
Each slaving voyage outfitted in London, Bristol, or Liverpool required a network of financial connections. British ships were usually financed by a group of investors in London. Manufactured goods bought on credit were loaded onto ships bound for West Africa. Because the entire venture was based on credit there were huge time lags before the manufacturers making the goods received payment from the financiers. Slave ships were away from their home port for a year or more. New World planters sending their harvests to London also had to wait long periods for payment for their produce. Financially the system was a success, but the human side of it was a disaster which the British outlawed in 1807.
British merchants and the captains of the slave ships developed their own contacts in Africa and in the Americas. Ship captains soon learned what manufactured goods were preferred by particular African traders and found which planter agents in each New World port could be relied on for the best deal on cotton, sugar or tobacco. Investors relied wholly on slave-ship captains to care for their investment in expensive ships and cargos and who were expected to have the experience needed to provide profits for the enterprise. A successful captain was paid handsomely in wages and bonuses at the end of a successful trip.
  By the time the British abolished slave trade, their slave ships alone had completed voyages carrying more than 3.2 million Africans on the middle voyage from Africa to the New World. First the British ended the Atlantic slave trade, and the next year the United States also stopped importing slaves. After America ended importation of slaves plantation owners were able to rely on the natural increase among slaves. Slavery in the United States officially ended in 1862 with the Emancipation Proclamation, but not until June 19th, 1865 (Juneteenth) did all locations actually stop the practice. In the 1850’s Britain attempted to stop the Atlantic traffic of slaves to Brazil, but the importation continued until 1888 when Brazil became the last country in the New World to outlaw slavery.
The Atlantic crossing of a European slave ship constituted a traumatic experience for the millions of Africans. The slave ship was in effect a floating dungeon. Before the Atlantic crossing even began, some slaves suffered months of confinement as the ship lingered on the African coast while the captain waited for enough captives to make the voyage profitable. Africans who made the journey had to survive disease, malnutrition, crowded space, not to mention the trauma of of being uprooted, whipped, and confined in a ship.
Although the British and Portuguese dominated the Atlantic slave trade, the the third-ranking French also shipped about one million Africans to Haiti in the late eighteenth century.
Of the 12.5 million Africans loaded onto 35,000 Atlantic ships by American and European slave traders, there are a few firsthand accounts of the slaves’ experience. One such account was published in 1789 by an African-born man living in London, titled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, (London, 1789). The author, Olaudah Equiano, detailed his life journey from African captivity, the Atlantic crossing, life in slavery, and eventual freedom. Equiano’s book presented a body of evidence that supported the cause against transatlantic slaving by Britain.
In his biographical book, Equiano vividly described the experience of fear and confusion in the Africans as he at the age of eleven, and his sister, were captured, walked for several months from trader to trader until they finally reached the coast where they were loaded onto ships. He described in detail the role of the white traders and the African chiefs in capturing and selling slaves.
The role of the African chief was to capture neighboring tribes through warfare in which he put himself at risk of capture. Equiano wrote, “…if he prevails and takes prisoners, he gratifies his avarice by selling them, but if his party be vanquished, and he falls into the hands of the enemy, he is put to death.” After some bargaining the chief “…accepts the price of his fellow creatures’ liberty with as little reluctance as the merchant.”
Equiano had never seen white people, sailing ships, nor even imagined anything comparable to the stinking holds of a slave ship. Equiano wrote that he and all the other Africans were “in another world,” and indeed they were. Equiano later described his first experience on the ship.
“I was soon put down under the decks, and here I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. “…the air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died.”
   Slave ships became known for the stench they emitted. Some sailors claimed they could tell a distant ship was a slaver by the downwind smell. Unfortunately many slaves did not survive. The main causes of death among slaves at sea was malnutrition, and disease due to the dreadful sanitation conditions below decks.
   Equiano’s life from that point took a far different course from most slaves who were sold to plantation owners. In 1754, he was purchased by Lieutenant Pascal, an officer in the Royal Navy. Pascal sent Equiano to London for schooling, then later sold him to a ship captain where he learned sailing. The captain eventually sold Equiano to an American planter named Robert King. Equiano’s rudimentary education provided him with some basic skills and prompted King to put him to work in marketing rather than in the fields.
After three years Robert King allowed Equiano to purchase his own freedom. As a free man, Equiano found employment using his sailing experience to earn a living in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Obviously Equiano’s experience was far different from the much harsher life of most slaves brought to the New World.
   American slaves working on plantations experienced varied treatment by their owners. Some were sold away from their own families to other regions, some were beaten or forced into sexual relationships with owners, while some were treated fairly and even given rudimentary education. Many recent publications recount these experiences.
Over more than 300 years the Atlantic trade routes carried 12.5 million African men, women, and children to the New World. Approximately 1.5 million (12 %) did not survive the dreaded middle passage voyage.

Sources
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Written by Himself. Hollywood, FL: Simon and Brown. 2018.

Wikipedia. History of slavery. Retrieved from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery

Hazard, Anthony. The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you- Retrieved from: ed.ted.com

Mustakeem, Sowande M. Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2016.

UNESCO. Transatlantic Slave Trade: Middle Passage. Retrieved from: slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/index.cfm?id=A0032.

UNESCO. Transatlantic Slave Trade. Slave Trade Routes: British Slave Trade. Retrieved from: slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0096.

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