Wednesday, 14th. Company engaged in hunting and curing meat.
Another brief entry. Jimmy John reported in his journal that they killed ten buffalo. It sounds like they are accumulating plenty of jerky, but it won’t last them very long.
They are getting close to South Pass and the Continental Divide.
Tuesday, 13th. Left our hunting encampment and met John Gray and Romaine returning from Green river. They found no person at the rendezvous on Green river, not any game ahead; it was therefore thought best to lay in more meat, while we were in the vicinity of the buffalo. We therefore came to a halt, having travelled about 15 miles.
John Grey and “Lord” Romaine had left on July 6th and gone ahead to see if there were any trappers or traders at the usual rendezvous spot on the Green River. The trip there and back had taken them a week. Nobody at the rendezvous and scarce game ahead was not good news. Jimmy John recorded that “they did not see any person, not even an Indian.”
By the way, William G. Romaine was called “Lord” Romaine by the company because of his British accent. He was a well-to-do and well-educated young Englishman who had hired Grey to guide him on a tour of the “Wild West.” His cultured upper-crust accent (think Masterpiece Theatre) naturally made these American frontiersmen think of him as an aristocrat, whether or not he was one. I expect he was a good sport about it all.
After his adventures in America, Romaine went on to a distinguished legal career at various outposts of the British Empire.
Since John Bidwell did not make a separate journal entry for this day, I will substitute an incident he related in his 1891 dictation. This happened somewhere along the journey — we don’t know just when or where.
I remember Mrs. Samuel Kelsey; I pitied her. We had traveled all day and everybody was tired. It was hard work to get a fire built, but she managed to and was frying some bacon and tried to make some coffee. She had, I think, five children, the smallest of which could barely stand alone. They were all standing around, crying at the top of their voices for something to eat. Just at that time the coffee upset and it went into the bacon and put out the fire. She threw up her hands and hollered out loud enough for the whole camp to hear: “I wish to the Lord I had never got married!”
Saturday, 10th. Travelled about 14 miles and stopped to kill and dry meat. Buffalo began to grow scarce.
On the 10th they decided to stay in place and spend a day or two hunting and drying meat. Good idea — but it wouldn’t be enough to get them to California.
Friday, 9th. Travelled about 18 miles, killed ten buffalo.
By this time on their journey the company had almost exhausted its supplies of flour and other foodstuffs. Bidwell had laid in extra supplies, because he hated the idea of living on nothing but meat, but by now even he must have been running low. He doesn’t say how much he had left. The company knew they still had a long way to go, although they really didn’t have a good idea of how far. They began to kill buffalo and dry the meat, with the hope that the jerky would last them until California.
However they had left their plans to “make meat” until too late. Crossing the plains they had seen vast herds of buffalo, but now as they traveled up the Sweetwater River toward the Continental Divide, they saw fewer and fewer. They killed twenty buffalo on the 8th and ten on the 9th. The number of buffalo would continue to dwindle.
Thursday, 8th. This morning we came in sight of Wind River mountains; their snow-enveloped summits were dimly seen through the misty clouds that obscured the western horizon. Made about 15 miles today and encamped on the Sweet Water in full view of thousands of buffalo; 20 were killed. We now began to lay in meat to last us over the mountains to California.
It’s a good idea to begin drying meat but they have left it too late. Whatever meat they try to preserve now will be gone long before they reach California.
Bidwell noted later that, “It was the first time I had seen snow in summer; some of the peaks were very precipitous, and the view was altogether most impressive.” (“The First Emigrant Train”, in Echoes of the Past.)
Wednesday, 7th. As we journeyed, the mountains were high and naked; passed a pond that was nearly dried up, perfectly white with Glauber Salts, and in many places two or three inches deep, so that large lumps weighing several pounds were taken up. Buffalo increased in number; 10 were killed. Travelled today about 14 miles.
The Bidwell-Bartleson Party are following the Sweetwater River west toward South Pass. Captain Fitzpatrick would already know about South Pass. His friend Jedediah Smith had explored the pass in 1824.
The Sweetwater rises at the southern end of the Wind River Mountain Range and flows almost due east to join the North Platte River near Independence Rock. It made an ideal trail for westering pioneers as it skirted the dramatic peaks of the Wind River Range.
Tuesday, 6th. This morning John Gray and Romaine were sent on to Green River to see if there were any trappers at the rendezvous, and then return to the company with the intelligence. All hands were anxious to have their names inscribed on this memorable rock, so that we did not start until near noon, went up stream about 8 miles and encamped on Sweet Water.
John Gray (usually spelled Grey) was a fur trader with many years experience in the mountains, hired by the the missionaries as a hunter for their group. W. G. Romaine, an Englishman, had also hired Gray as his guide in the American West. Gray would already be familiar with the trail to the Green River rendezvous, which is why he was sent off by Captain Fitzpatrick to see if any mountain men were gathered there. July was the month for rendezvous.
According to the Wikipedia entry for the Upper Green River Rendezvous Site, a National Historic Landmark:
The rendezvous was an organized meeting point for fur trappers, their suppliers, and the buyers of their products to meet. The meetings were first organized by William Henry Ashley, and brought a sense of organization and structure to the otherwise dispersed fur trapping and trading business. Meetings were held annually, generally centered at some location on the Green River. Five were known to be held near the confluence with Horse Creek, but all of them were sprawling affairs, due to the large number of animals needing water and forage.
Bidwell in his journal entry does not mention nearby Devil’s Gate, but James John did, though he calls it “cut rock” rather than its current name of Devil’s Gate.
6th. Started at the usual hour travelling up Sweet water valley. Passed by the curiosity in the mountains called cut rock having a gap about 60 feet wide not less than 250 feet high thru which passes the Sweet water creek.
Several times people have asked me, “How did John Bidwell know how far they had traveled each day? How did they measure the miles?” It’s a good question and I can only guess at the answer, but here goes—
Attempts to measure distance traveled go back a long way. The ancient Romans did it. So did the Chinese. A simple way to measure distance is to tie a rag or ribbon to a wheel and have somebody count the number of revolutions. Multiply that by the circumference of the wheel and you have the distance traveled.
That is not a job I would want, but Julius Caesar would have made a soldier or a slave do the counting.
Benjamin Franklin (of course! who else?) invented an odometer when he was postmaster general in order to calculate the distance between major cities. According to How Stuff Works, it was a geared device that clicked over a mile for every 400 revolutions of the wheel of his carriage. The Franklin Institute has such an odometer in its collection.
William Clayton, a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and a Mormon pioneer, developed an improved odometer, which he called a roadometer, in 1847. According the the National Park Service,
Just 10 days and 75 miles out of Winter Quarters, William Clayton recorded in his journal: I walked this afternoon in company with Orson Pratt and suggested to him the idea of fixing a set of wooden cog wheels to the hub of a wagon wheel in such order as to tell the exact number of miles we travel each day. He seemed to agree with me that it could be easily done at a trifling expense. In this fashion the odometer, called the roadometer, was invented in 1847 by the Mormon pioneers crossing the plains from Missouri.
The National Park service article on Clayton’s odometer has a diagram, in case you want to build your own. The use of this device enabled Clayton to give accurate information to future emigrants in his The Latter-day Saints’ Emigrants’ Guide.
But Clayton made his device in 1847, and Bidwell was on the trail in 1841. Did he and his companions have some kind of odometer, or were they estimating? That’s the question.
Bidwell never mentions having an odometer, and neither do any of the other members of the party. At least three members of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party kept daily journals: Bidwell, James John, and Nicholas Dawson. It is interesting to note that their records of mileage do not always agree. For instance, on July 4th, Bidwell writes that they traveled 22 miles. Jimmy John has 16 miles, and “Cheyenne” Dawson has 20.
I suspect they were estimating the distance, based on hours of travel, the speed (very slow) of oxen, the nature of the terrain, etc.
If I ever get a chance to meet John Bidwell, I’ll ask him that question!
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