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Historic Trails Blogs

Short accounts of historic trails of the world and the people who traveled them for trade or migration.




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Margaret Frink, Part 2

11/9/2020

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Picture
From Ft Kearny to the Continental Divide at South Pass.
PictureUnknown 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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Picture
Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory in June 1858, eight years after Margaret Frink passed through. Photo by Samuel C. Mills
PictureThe 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.



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





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​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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Picture
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.
Picture
Persian Empire in 6th century BCE. Trail is shown in red.
PictureNakasendo 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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Picture
PictureThe 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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Picture
Pony Express route from St. Joseph to Sacramento.
Picture
Pony Express rider and the new telegraph lines. Artist, George Ottinger, 1867.
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The mochila fit over the saddle and could be easily transferred to a fresh horse in a few seconds.
Picture“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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Picture
PictureAfrican 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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Pilgrimage Trails

6/17/2020

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Picture
Chaucer's pilgrims enroute to Canterbury.
PictureThe scallop shell is the symbol of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Route markers along the way display the symbol and pilgrims walking the trail tie a shell to their clothing.

Roger M. McCoy

     We often visit places associated with a famous and respected person such as Washington’s home or Lincoln’s home. Sometimes we travel to places of great historical significance such as Gettysburg or the Normandy beaches. People often visit places considered to be sacred for their association with religious history, such as Jerusalem, Mecca, or Bodh Gaya, India, where the Buddha received enlightenment. In addition to these major destinations, there are innumerable other religious sites honored by many different beliefs.
    Journeys to these places of significance may be no more than an item on your travel checklist. For many people, however, travel to such sites has special significance, which defines a pilgrimage. Long ago people began making pilgrimages to holy sites and certain routes begun in medieval times are still in use today.
    Author Joseph Campbell points out that religious pilgrimages to the Holy Land began as early as the fourth century. Except for a two-hundred year disruption due to Islamic conquests, the number of pilgrims continued to grow over the years. By the eleventh century single expeditions often had as many as 12,000 people.
    Medieval pilgrims traditionally carried little food, water, or possessions other than the clothes they wore. Usually they had a walking staff, a purse or bag to hold bread, and a clay water container attached to a strap. Typically they wore a hat, a cloak, and leather shoes. People along the way often offered food to pilgrims believing it would bring blessings to themselves.                
Following are accounts of two religious pilgrimage routes in Europe.

The Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury, England
    In mid-twelfth century England King Henry II appointed a friend named Thomas Becket to the important post of Lord Chancellor. In this job Becket enforced the payment of taxes from all landowners, including churches, and became a trusted subject to the King. Becket and the King also formed a strong friendship and often hunted and played chess together.
    When the then-current Archbishop of Canterbury died, the King appointed Thomas Becket as the new archbishop. Because Becket was not even a priest in the Church, ordination to the priesthood took place a few days later, followed the next day by ordination to archbishop—a leap from tax collector to archbishop in ten days. Henry II felt confident that having a loyal ally would help in his plan to weaken the English church’s allegiance to Rome and establish himself as the authority. King Henry II persuaded the other bishops to align with his plan to move away from the influence of the pope, but Becket refused to sign the document that would put the king before the pope. Becket seems to have experienced a religious conversion and shifted his loyalty to the Church—not the King.
    Henry summoned Becket to appear before a great council to answer allegations of contempt of royal authority. After conviction on the charges Becket stormed out of the trial and fled to the protection of King Louis VII of France. Henry tried to force Becket to return to Canterbury through treacherous schemes, but Becket retaliated by threatening the King with the direst measure: excommunication—meaning the King would never be able to receive the Church’s sacraments. After six years in France and serious negotiations Becket returned to Canterbury. Upon his return Becket excommunicated three noblemen who had been his most bitter foes.
    At this point King Henry became enraged and is said to have uttered the notorious words, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” [Several variations on this statement have been debated by scholars.] The knights who heard King Henry make this statement took it as a royal command and four of them immediately left for Canterbury to murder Thomas Becket. The abbey monks tried to make Becket take shelter, but he refused and knelt at an altar while the knights broke into the doorway.  It is recorded by eyewitnesses that the knights cracked open his skull, spilling his brains onto the cathedral floor. Killing an archbishop was indeed a dire crime and Becket immediately became a national martyr. Within days a Becket shrine was established in Canterbury Cathedral and soon became the most important pilgrimage destination in England.
    King Henry was horrified when he heard the news and realized his words had caused Becket’s death. As an act of penance he donned sackcloth and ashes, and ate nothing for three days. The king then performed a public act of penance at Canterbury. He publicly confessed his sins, and then allowed each bishop present to give him five blows from a rod, then each of the eighty monks of the monastery with Canterbury Cathedral gave the king three blows. The king then offered gifts to Becket's shrine and held a vigil at Becket's tomb.
    Pilgrims began to converge on Canterbury to pay homage to the martyred Becket.  Although pilgrims arrived from any direction, the preferred starting point was the cathedral city of Winchester—153 miles from Canterbury—requiring fifteen days of travel. Henry II came from his royal castle in Normandy to a port on the south coast and thence to Winchester to begin his own pilgrimage to Canterbury.
    The well-known work written in 1400 by Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Canterbury Tales,” tells of a group of twenty-nine pilgrims of all social classes traveling from London to Canterbury, twenty-four of whom tell a tale written in rhyming verse.

                         Ready to start upon my pilgrimage
                         To Canterbury, full of devout homage…
                         …Some nine and twenty in a company
                         Of sundry persons who chanced to fall
                         In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all…
                         …It seems to me accordant with reason
                         To inform you of the state of every one…
     
   Each of the twenty-four pilgrims telling a story is identified by trade or profession, including a knight, a miller, a cook, a friar, a merchant, and a physician, plus eighteen others. Historians and literati value Chaucer’s work for its view of life in late fourteenth-century England and the expertise of his writing.

The Way of Saint James (Camino de Santiago de Compostela)

​A second example of pilgrimage routes is the road to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Legends tell that the Apostle James's remains were carried by boat from Jerusalem to northern Spain, where he was buried in what is now the city of Santiago de Compostela.  Roads from many parts of Europe converge on a road in northern Spain that follows an earlier Roman trade route westward to the Atlantic coast.
    The legend holds that Saint James preached in Spain where he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. He later returned to preach in the Holy Land and was beheaded by Herod in 44 A.D. His followers then took his body by ship to Santiago de Compostela, Spain for burial as a martyr.
    Where there is a martyr there is soon a shrine and a pilgrimage. One unusual aspect of this particular pilgrimage is its association with the scallop shell. One legend explaining the importance of the shell says that the ship wrecked just offshore and Saint James's body was lost. Some time later his body washed onto a Spanish beach covered with scallops.
      During the medieval period a scallop shell was worn as proof of completion of the pilgrimage. Today’s pilgrims wear a scallop shell on their clothing or backpack during the trek to Santiago de Compostela. The shell also appears on sign posts marking the route.
    The daily needs of pilgrims on their way to and from Compostela were met by a series of hospices with lodging and care for travelers and usually run by a religious order and under royal protection. The hospices expected a donation from the travelers but many poor travelers had little to offer and some had such bad health they could barely complete a day’s journey between hospices.
    Pilgrims walked the Way of Saint James for months to arrive at the great church in the main square of Compostela and pay homage to St. James. Traditionally pilgrims touched the pillar just inside the doorway of the cathedral and the pilgrimage was complete. So many pilgrims have now touched the pillar that the stone is partially worn away.
    Typically pilgrimages involve a journey to a significant place where a person may experience renewed understanding of themselves. To many, however, the journey itself, not the place, is the significant action.

Sources
Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Creative Mythology. Joseph Campbell. 1973.

The British Pilgrimage Trust. The Pilgrims Ways to Canterbury. Retrieved from website: https://britishpilgrimage.org/portfolio/pilgrims-way-to-canterbury/

Becket Controversy. Retrieved from website:  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becket_controversy#Aftermath

Henry II of England. Retrieved from website:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry II of England

Camino de Santiago. Retrieved from website:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino de Santiago
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Stagecoach Trails

5/25/2020

2 Comments

 
Picture
This drawing from the Tombstone Epitaph in 1886 was part of an advertisement promoting the stagecoach service from Tucson, Arizona to Tombstone, Arizona.
PictureThe Butterfield stage route originated from Saint Louis with a later branch to Memphis.
Roger M McCoy

    The first mention of a coach was in an English manuscript from the thirteenth century. The first known stagecoach route in Britain began much later, in 1610, and made a short run from Edinburgh to Leith, Scotland a distance of only three miles. This small beginning was soon followed by a proliferation of other routes, and by the mid-seventeenth century, a basic stagecoach infrastructure was in place in Great Britain. With infrastructure in place the stagecoach then became the primary means of carrying mail and passengers between cities. In 1649 Edward Chamberlayne wrote admiringly about this new transportation in 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
         endamaging of one's health and one's body 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 1650 was equivalent to $8.25 in today’s dollar. Today a shuttle from my house to the Tucson airport costs $49 or about $10 for every five miles. Coincidentally, that shuttle is called Stagecoach Express.)

    In support of this growth in stage lines, coaching inns developed as stopping points for travelers on longer routes as between London and Liverpool. These inns became stopping points or stages in the journey that provided food and drink for the passengers and a change of horses. The business of running stagecoaches or the act of journeying in them was known as staging—hence the name stagecoach.
    During the American colonial period, the stagecoach was the primary carrier among the New England colonies. In the early nineteenth century railroads began to be built in the United States and by 1845 were built as far west as Saint Louis, but there was still no way to send mail to San Francisco except by a long voyage by ship around South America.
     In 1850 a ship from New York took about 200 days (6.5 months) to sail to San Francisco. The discovery of gold in California led to a rapid increase in population in the west and created a strong need for a shorter communication time with the west coast. To this purpose the United States Congress authorized a contract in 1857 for overland mail service from Missouri to California via horse-drawn conveyances. This far-reaching contract was awarded to New York businessman John Butterfield.
     The visionary John Butterfield developed a grand scheme for a stagecoach route to carry mail and passengers from the railhead in Saint Louis to San Francisco in only twenty-five days. It took a year to work out the details, and Butterfield decided on a southern route, south from Saint Louis via Arizona to avoid bad weather. In addition, he refused to carry gold or silver in an effort to cut down on attacks by highwaymen. Butterfield built 139 relay stations along the 2,795-mile route, about twenty miles apart with meals and horses at each of the stops. For the twenty-five-day trip, the Butterfield stages did not stop for the passengers to sleep. Their only choice was to sleep on the moving stage.
    In New Mexico and Arizona the Butterfield trail passed through Apache territory, and for two years the Chiricahua Apaches permitted safe passage by an agreement under which the tribe would be compensated and also provide firewood for the stage stations. This arrangement came to an end when an army lieutenant had an angry exchange of words with the Apache chief, Cochise, and the lieutenant put Cochise in jail. This unfortunate event led to hostilities between Apaches and Arizona settlers for the next twenty-five years.
    In 1860 the Pony Express, a single rider on horseback, began carrying mail over a central route and shortened mail delivery time even further. The following year, the Butterfield Overland Mail route was discontinued and the Pony Express joined forces with Wells Fargo, which began in 1852 as an express and banking service.    
    Stagecoaches became such a fixture for travel that it is worth looking at them in some detail. Among several variations and sizes of stagecoach, two stand out as most used in the western United States. One was the Concord Coach, originally built in Concord, New Hampshire. This coach could hold six passengers inside with a few more sitting on top. Usually four horses were sufficient, but often six were used. The inside of the Concord style coach measured four feet wide and about four and one-half feet high. The seats were boards with padded leather upholstery, which were said to be harder than a bare board. The walls had cloth coverings.
    A second type of stagecoach, built in Concord and Albany, was the celerity (swift) wagon. This lighter-weight wagon was designed by John Butterfield for use on his mail route. To decrease weight, the celerity wagon had canvas instead of a wooden top and larger window openings with canvas roll-down curtains. The larger windows reduced weight but gave less protection from constant dust. For extra stability the wheels were farther apart with longer axles. Wider steel rims on the wheels served well for traveling on sandy roads. Some stagecoaches had seat backs that let down to create a flat bed so passengers could sleep. However this feature was of limited use if the coach was full of people. Luggage was stored in a compartment on the back as the canvas roof could not bear weight.
    One Butterfield passenger, a Mr. Ormsby, wrote in 1858 about his efforts to get some sleep while bouncing along in a celerity wagon. “Perhaps the jolting will be disagreeable at first, but a few nights without sleeping will obviate that difficulty, and soon the jolting will be as little disturbance as a rocking cradle.” Ormsby added that, “White pants and kid gloves had better be discarded.”
    Other stagecoach routes took a more direct route west from Saint Louis to San Francisco passing directly through the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains across Wyoming. In 1870 Mark Twain made the trip by stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to Virginia City, Nevada, site of the famous Comstock gold lode, where he worked for a newspaper. Twain kept an account of his travels by stagecoach across the West and published a detailed and interesting account of the trip titled Roughing It.
    Twain’s description of a  stagecoach station in the middle of the prairie is particularly interesting as it shows the adaptions and meager life style in the vast grasslands with no timber for building.
          The station buildings were long, low huts made of sundried, mud-colored
           bricks, laid up without mortar. The roofs, which had no slant to them worth
           speaking of, were thatched and then sodded or covered with a thick layer
           of earth, and from this sprung a pretty rank growth of weeds and grass.
           It was the first time we had ever seen a man ’s front yard on top of his
            house. The buildings consisted of barns with stables for twelve or fifteen
            horses, and a hut used for an eating-room for passengers.

    Twain wrote that the station’s window was a square hole with no glass and the floor was hard-packed earth. By the door outside was a tin wash basin, a pail of water and a piece of yellow soap, but no towel. A mirror hung in one corner with half a comb hanging by a string. The few three-legged stools provided seats at the table, which was a greasy board on stilts. A battered tin plate, a knife and fork and a tin pint cup were at each man’s place. Twain wrote, “We could not eat the bread nor drink the the “slumgullion.” (Slumgullion is a thin stew with little substance.)
    Because the stagecoach stopped only for eating and changing horses, all passengers managed to catch what sleep they could while bouncing along in the coach. Mark Twain gave a vivid account of traveling through the night without stop.
           We never moved a muscle all night, but waked at early dawn in
           the original positions, and got up at once, thoroughly refreshed, free of                   soreness and brim full of friskiness. After breakfast we bathed in
           Horse Creek [Wyoming]—an appreciated luxury, for it was seldom
           that our furious coach halted long enough for an indulgence of
           that kind. We changed horses ten or twelve times in every
           twenty-four hours—rather changed mules—and did it every
           time in four minutes. It was lively work. As our coach rattled up to
           each station six harnessed mules stepped gayly from the stable;
           and in the twinkling of an eye, almost, the old team was out and the new                 one in and off and away again.

    After getting accustomed to the bouncing ride of the stagecoach, Twain wrote, “Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage of the most sumptuous description—an imposing cradle on wheels.”
    Although the mail and passenger service by stagecoach lasted only a short time the stagecoach routes played a major role in connecting the east and west of the continent before the railroad and hold a prominent place in the history of the West.

Sources
Ahnert, Gerald T. Butterfield Overland Mail Company stagecoaches and stage (celerity) wagons used on the southern trail. Syracuse, New York: Gerald Ahnert. 2013.

Ely, Glen Sample. The Texas frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail. 1858-1861. Norman: Oklahoma University Press. 2016.

Helmich, Mary, A. Stage styles: Not all were coaches. California Department of
         Parks and Recreation. 2008. Retrieved from https://www.parks.ca.gov/?                 page_id=25449.

Twain, Mark. Roughing It. Hartford Connecticut: American Publishing Company. 1873. (Many newer editions are available.)

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Life on the Cattle Trail

4/15/2020

3 Comments

 
Picture
Cattle drive sculpture by Paul Moore at the Chisholm Trail Heritage Center, Duncan, Oklahoma
PictureThe chuck wagon moved ahead of the herd to the next campsite and began preparation of the evening meal. Photograph by Erwin Smith ca. 1912.
Roger McCoy

     Herding cattle over long distances was an arduous job. Most of the time it was also a tedious job, but the tedium was occasionally broken abruptly by emergencies such as storms, swollen rivers, and stampedes. Storms in particular were dangerous because the lightning and thunder could frighten the cattle and cause a stampede. The men themselves also feared for their safety during such storms. G. W. Mills wrote of a sudden hailstorm so intense the men’s hands and backs were covered with welts, and the hail was four inches deep on the ground. Following that storm, “We had no supper nor breakfast; when we got to camp the next morning, we found the cook fixing to leave, thinking surely that all the men had been killed by the hail.”
     The drovers lived spartan lives as they carried just enough goods to be self-sufficient for two months. Each drover usually carried a change of clothes and a blanket or tarp for bedding. His saddle became a pillow but a tent was out of the question. Drovers carried no medical supplies so if one became sick or injured he could only hope for a quick recovery or quick death. The most common cause of illness was contaminated water drunk from streams on the trail.  The still-popular red bandanna was tied around a cowboy’s neck, to be pulled over his nose and mouth when the dust clouds swirled around the herds.
One drover, J.C. Davis, wrote to his girlfriend that they had a string of bad luck with “1 killed, 1 with his back broke, 1 collar bone broke, & I came near getting drowning in the Canadian River yesterday.” Jack Bailey wrote in his journal about the loneliness and isolation after weeks on the trail, “i was such a fool to come on this trip. one consolation is that I am not afraid to die.”
     River crossings could be as routine as wading through shallow water, but it was extremely dangerous when the herd had to swim across a river. Once in the water, cattle tended to start milling in circles or trying to turn back. Several drovers had to be on the opposite shore to keep them moving after crossing and not block the way for other cattle. In 1877 J.M. Nance wrote of crossing the Brazos River in Texas with 2,100 head of cattle swimming the swollen river. “It looked as if I had no cattle at all, for all I could see were the horns,” he wrote. 
      Nance later wrote of crossing the Canadian River at flood in Indian Territory. After waiting several days for the river to lower, he began moving the herd across. He wrote, “The cattle were started across and were going fine, when it came a terrific hailstorm and the hail began pelting us. One of the men was on the other side, naked, with his horse and about half the herd.” They delayed the crossing until the next morning when Nance wrote, “The naked man reported he had a good saddle blanket which kept him ‘warm enough’ during the night.”
    A chuck wagon, earlier called a mess wagon, carried food enough for the journey. Incidentally, one of the many meanings for the word chuck is “food” or “provisions.” The chuck wagon usually carried flour, bacon, coffee, dried peaches, grits, beans, pickles, and black pepper. Meals were simple but hearty and the menu was repetitious, consisting of bacon, beef stew, beans and biscuits. If dried fruit was included in the chuck wagon provisions, cowboys could also expect an occasional pie. A cast-iron Dutch oven was essential for camp cooking.  A shallow pit was dug in the ground with a hot fire built at the bottom; the Dutch oven with the stew or beans inside was lowered into the pit, and hot coals placed on the lid. This cooked for hours to create tender meat or beans.  Biscuits and pies were also baked this way. Cast-iron skillets cooked bacon over an open fire.
     At night the cattle were kept close together and allowed to graze. Riders rode around the herd in shifts to prevent straying and to keep predators at bay. It was during the nighttime that riders sang to help keep cattle calm. Probably most cowboys sang without a real tune or lyrics, “Git Along Little Dogies” was first mentioned in a journal from 1893. The first reference to the song “The Old Chisholm Trail” is from a diary in 1870. Both these songs were based on Irish and English songs dating back to 1640. It is unclear how the American cowboys adapted the lyrics to their situation. Western singers such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers sang it as part of their regular repertory. Go to YouTube for audio versions of the songs. 

The lyrics to “The Old Chisholm Trail” ring true to the trail drover’s experience.
“Well, come along boys and listen to my tale
I'll tell you all my troubles on the ol' Chisholm Trail
chorus:
Come a-ti yi youpy, youpy yea, youpy yea
Come a-ti yi youpy, youpy yea.

I started up the trail October twenty-third
Started up the trail with the U-2 herd
chorus:

On a ten dollar horse and a forty dollar saddle
Started out punchin' them long horn cattle
chorus:

With my seat in the saddle and my hand on the horn
I'm the best dang cowboy that was ever born
chorus: 

It's cloudy in the west and lookin' like rain
And my danged old slicker's in the wagon again
chorus:”

“Git Along Little Dogies”   This song depicts the cowboy driving cattle to Wyoming. A dogie is an orphaned calf.
“As I was walking one morning for pleasure
I spied a cowpuncher riding along
His hat was throwed back and his spurs were a-jingling
And as he approached he was singing this song
chorus
Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies.
It's your misfortune and none of my own.
Whoopie ti yi yo, git along little dogies
You know that Wyoming will be your new home.

Early in the springtime we round up the dogies
Mark 'em and brand 'em and bob off their tails,
Round up the horses, load up the chuck wagon,
Then throw the little dogies out on the long trail.”
chorus:

Despite the many books, movies and songs about the cattle trails, we can never fully know the experience of herding cattle in nineteenth-century conditions.





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