goldfields

Monday, 5th. The hills continued to increase in height. After travelling 16 miles we encamped at a noted place called Independence Rock. This is a huge isolated rock covering an area, perhaps half a square mile, and rising in shape of an irregular obtuse mound to the height of 100 feet.

Father DeSmet wondered how the feature acquired such a “pompous name,” and thought it might be because of its isolated situation. But he was told that:

It was called so because the first travellers who thought of giving it a name, arrived at it on the very day when the people of the United States celebrate the anniversary of their emancipation from Great Britain.

As Bidwell wrote:

It took its name from the celebration of the 4th of July at this place by Capt. Wm. Sublette, and it now bears many names of the early travellers to these regions.

Sublette, fur trapper and mountain man, gave the rock its name in 1830, as he led 81 men and 10 wagons to the Wind River to hunt for furs and trade with the Indians. It became, as Father DeSmet called it, the “Great Register of the Desert,” as countless trappers, traders, emigrants, and missionaries carved or painted their names on the rock.

Today you can visit Independence Rock, walk the path around its base, even climb on it. (Watch out for mosquitoes–Wyoming mosquitoes are big and mean and I got the bites to prove it.) Hunt for names—the earliest I spotted was from 1890, but a careful search should turn up earlier ones. Many pioneers carved their names on the rock, but others only painted them with tar or grease, and those names have faded away.

Saturday, 3rd. Left the N. fork; a distance of 12 miles took us to a spring of cool, though unpleasantly tasted water. The day was intensely warm, and road mountainous; killed four buffalo and two deer.

The Company is still relying on bison for meat, but at least they aren’t killing eight or ten a day like they did earlier in the trip. They must have realized what a waste that was. Bidwell in particular was bothered by the evidence of wholesale slaughter he saw about him, and predicted that, “If they continue to decrease in the same ratio that they have for the past 15 or 20 years, they will ere long become totally extinct.”

During the 1820s and ’30s they were mainly slaughtered to harvest their hides for buffalo robes. The meat was left to rot, much to the dismay of men like Bidwell, who rightly feared their extinction. This continued until there were only about 500 American bison left. At last in 1884 Congress ordered the Army to protect the wild buffalo at Yellowstone National Park from poachers and their numbers began to recover. It was a near thing.

Monday, 28th. Passed an immense quarry of beautiful white alabaster; 3 buffalo killed, distance traveled 18 miles, encamped on a little rivulet affording as good water as ever run.

On the same day, James John wrote in his journal:

Took dinner on the bank of a creek of good water and good grass. Near there is a large cliff was white as snow, a little harder than common chalk and some of the earth is composed of a substance, supposed by the Company to be plaster of Paris.

Alabaster is a form of gypsum and is indeed used in making plaster of Paris.

Father De Smet wrote about the alabaster quarry.

We discovered a curious quarry, which, at first, we took for white marble, but we soon found it something more valuable. Astonished at the facility with which we could fashion this kind of stone into any shape, most of the travellers made calumets of it. I had several made myself, with the intention of offering them as presents to the Indians, so that for the space of forty-eight hours our camp was filled with lapidaries. But the great number of these calumets could not withstand the action of the fire, and broke. It was alabaster.

The dictionary definition of alabaster at Lexico.com says it is a “fine-grained, translucent form of gypsum, typically white, often carved into ornaments.” Its relative softness makes it easy to carve.

A calumet is a ceremonical pipe used by Native Americans. Here’s a picture of one carved out of salmon alabaster.

Sunday, 27th. Day was warm, road hilly, found no water for 20 miles, encamped on a stream affording grass and timber in abundance, cottonwood &c. Found no hard timber.

No water for 20 miles is tough on the animals, but just wait, in another month it will get much worse.