Tuesday, 3rd. Ascended a high divide and passed down by a most difficult route into the valley of the Bear river. The course of this stream was marked out as it wound its way through the vale by the willows that skirted its banks. Reached the river, where we found abundance of grass, having come about 20 miles.
An abundance of grass was always welcome. Jimmy John reported trout in the river as well.
The Bear River begins and ends in Utah, where it empties into the Great Salt Lake, but along its winding U-shaped course it wanders through three states: Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. At 500 miles long, it is the longest river in the United States that does not empty into an ocean.
At this point on their journey, the Bidwell-Bartleson Party has come to the Bear River close to where the three states meet.
Monday, 2nd. Retraced about 2 miles of yesterday’s travel, and went up another defile, in order to find a practicable route across the divide between the waters of the Green and Bear rivers; plenty of grass, good spring water, distance 11 miles.
According to the Uintas County, Wyoming website, “The Bear River is the world’s longest river that does not flow into an ocean. The river starts in the High Uintas of Utah, flows through Wyoming, Idaho and Utah before finally ends up in the Great Salt Lake. It is 515 miles-long, though it final destination is less than 100 miles from its headwaters.”
On this map they are about halfway between Black’s Fork and Bear Lake.
Sunday, August 1. Ascended Black’s fork about 12 miles.
They are now in the present-day southwest corner of Wyoming, near the border with Utah. Black’s Fork is a 175 mile-long tributary of the Green River. It was here in 1843, two years later, that Jim Bridger and Luis Vasquez would establish a trading post. It was an important resting and meeting place on the Oregon-California-Mormon-Pony Express trail, but it was not there yet for the Bidwell-Bartleson Party.
For more about Fort Bridger, visit Fort Bridger State Historic Site. (Which I have always meant to do while traveling cross-country, but I haven’t got there yet.)
Replica of Bridger’s trading post at Fort Bridger State Historic Site.
Saturday, 31st. Left Ham’s fork this morning. A distance of 14 miles, over an uncommonly hilly road, took us to Black’s fork of Green river, on which we encamped. Here we found a little grass and no wood. The hills, which everywhere rose to view, were thinly clad with shrubby cedars. The fruit found in this lonesome part of creation — serviceberries on the mts. and currants on the streams. In the afternoon we descried a large smoke rising from beyond the intervening chain of hills. From this and other signs we were assured that there were plenty of Indians in the country. It was necessary therefore to keep a vigilant look-out, lest the Blackfeet should leave us minus a few horses.
The serviceberry (amelanchier) is a delicious and highly nutritious native of North America, also known as shadbush, shadblow, saskatoon, and juneberry. The berries are dark purple when ripe. Native Americans used dried serviceberries in pemmican. For more about serviceberries, check out this article at the Backyard Forager.
Friday, 30th. Traveled about 5 miles and encamped. Guess what took place; another family was created! Widow Gray, who was a sister to Mrs. Kelsey, was married to a man who joined our Company at Fort Larimie. His right name I forget; but his everywhere name, in the mountains, was Cocrum. He had but one eye — marriage ceremony performed by Father De Smet.
I like the idea of an “everywhere name,” although how the man got that nickname is anyone’s guess. Jimmy John called him Cockrel; his real name was Richard Phelan. He was a fur trapper who joined the wagon train at Fort Laramie. Unattached women were in short supply in the West at that time, so maybe the Widow Gray looked like a likely prospect for a single man.
We don’t know Mrs. Gray’s first name, only that she was the sister of Lucy (Mrs. Samuel) Kelsey and had a young child with her. It’s likely that she was in her twenties; not as old as “Widow Gray” sounds.
Phelan gave up trapping and continued on to Oregon with the half of the party that took the safer route, and with his wife settled down to farming in Oregon.
Henry Fraeb and his party of about 20 trappers left the rendezvous on the Green River on July 25th. The Fraeb Party headed east, toward Fraeb’s trading post on the Little Snake River, hunting for buffalo. The beaver trade was in decline, but buffalo robes were in high demand.
Buffalo robe coat
Earlier in 1841 Henry Fraeb and Jim Bridger had built at log trading post on the Little Snake River, near what is now the Wyoming-Colorado border. This was south of the route that the Bidwell-Bartleson Party took, in a good region for hunting buffalo.
About three weeks after they met with the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, Fraeb and his group of hunters was attacked by 500 Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. The battle was fierce, taking place over two days, and leaving from 40 to 50 Native Americans dead and five dead of Fraeb’s party. It’s astounding that any of them survived.
One of the survivors was Jim Baker, who had come with the Bidwell-Bartleson Party in search of Fraeb and his men. When Fraeb was killed early in the battle, he took over and directed the fight. Nearly all the horses were killed, since Fraeb’s men used their horses as a wall to shield behind.
The Bidwell-Bartleson Party went on their way, ignorant of what happened to Fraeb and his men. In “The First Emigrant Train to California,” Bidwell relates what he thought he knew about the incident:
Years afterwards we heard of the fate of that party; they were attacked by Indians the very first night after they left us and several of them killed, including the captain of the trapping party, whose name was Frapp. The whisky was probably the cause.
By the time Bidwell wrote that in 1889 he was a Prohibitionist, so he does not fail to point the moral. But since the battle did not take place until almost a month later, whiskey was probably not the cause. Some other problem caused the Indians to attack the intruders they saw as a threat.
Nothing exciting going on here, so Bidwell just “dittos” his entries. They were in the southwest corner of what is now Wyoming, approaching the Wyoming-Idaho/Utah border. The weather was hot, and the land dry, but the river provided water and grass for their livestock.
This map of fur trapper rendezvous sites shows Ham’s Fork just below the 42nd parallel (the blue line). The map is borrowed from The Fur Trapper website, which has an excellent article on rendezvous from 1825 to 1840. The heyday of the beaver trade was over, and the era of the big rendezvous finished in 1840. The era of the emigrant wagon trains was beginning.
Note the red line indicating the Continental Divide, and the way that the rivers seem to go every which way in this region of the Rockies.
Since there is nothing to report for the next two days, I will instead tell you of the fate of Fraeb’s fur trappers, the men who bought the whiskey from John Bartleson and friends.
Monday, 26th. Left Green river – moved off in a W. direction – distance 12 miles — encamped on a branch of Green river called Ham’s fork. Land high, dry, and barren, except upon the streams, which afford grass in abundance; also black currants, which though not delicious are acceptable.
Wild Black Currants
Black currants, even if they were not very sweet or delicious, would have provided vital nutrition for the travelers. Black currants have an extremely high level of vitamin C, as well as good levels of potassium, phosphorus, and iron. Excellent for keeping scurvy at bay, and scurvy is always a danger when people are living primarily on meat, as these pioneers were.
John Bidwell recorded some prices in his entry for July 25, 1841.
I will not omit to state the prices of several kinds of mountain goods. Powder which is sold by the cupful (pint) is worth $1 per cup. Lead 1.50 per lb., good Mackinaw blankets 8 to 15 dollars; sugar $1 per cupful; pepper $1 also; cotton and calico shirts from 3 to 5$; rifles from 30 to 60. In return, you will receive dressed deerskins at $3, pants made of deerskins $10, beaver skins $10, moccasins $1; flour sold in the Mts. at 50 cents per cupful, tobacco at $2 per lb., butcher knives from 1 to 3$. A good gun is worth as much as a horse; a cap lock is preferred, caps worth $1 per box.
These prices would have shocked the folks back home. For comparison, here are a few prices in Massachusetts in 1841, from Comparative Wages, Prices and Cost of Living(1885) which contains prices going back to the 1790s.
White sugar sold for 15 cents a pound (and there are several cups in a pound), flour sold for 4 cents a pound, or $7 a barrel, and pepper was 20 cents a pound. A blanket cost $5.50 but whether it was a “good Mackinaw blanket” I don’t know.
Pocket knives were 25 cents each; a butcher knife would have cost somewhat more, maybe 50 cents. Tobacco was 20 to 28 cents a pound, so you can see that the price had increased 8-fold in the mountains.
This must be where John Bidwell acquired the “buckskin suit” he mentions wearing when he and Jimmy John went to get some snow from the mountains.
Sunday, 25th. Left the rendezvous this morning, 6 of the company, viz., John Gray, Peyton, Frye, Rogers, Jones, and Romaine, started to return to the United States. Baker stopped in the mountains to trap; crossed Green river and descended it about 8 miles. Trapp and his company likewise left in search of buffalo.
Trapp, as you will recall, was Henry Fraeb (tricky name). The name also shows up as Frapp. I’ll have more about him shortly.
John Gray had been hired by the Englishman William G. Romaine to escort him on a tour of the American West. They hadn’t signed up to go to California, so it was time for them to turn back. I don’t know anything about Peyton or Jones. Bidwell describes Rogers and Amos Frye as “pleasure seekers,” what we would call tourists. Bidwell and Frye would meet up again nine years later on the East Coast. Frye came to California to work for Bidwell on Rancho Chico and died in Chico in 1852.
Baker, who “stopped in the mountains to trap,” was Jim Baker, a trapper who had attached himself to the company to travel to the Rockies. At this time he was a young man, about the same age as John Bidwell, but he would go on to a long career as a hunter, trapper, explorer, scout, and rancher, and an associate of John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and other frontiersmen. There is a good article about him at WyoHistory,org.
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