goldfields

In five days after my arrival we were ready to start, but no one knew where to go, not even the captain. Finally a man came up, one of the last to arrive, and announced that a company of Catholic missionaries were on their way from St. Louis to the Flathead nation of Indians with an old Rocky Mountaineer for a guide, and that if we would wait another day they would be up with us. At first we were independent, and thought we could not afford to wait for a slow missionary party. But when we found that no one knew which way to go, we sobered down and waited for them to come up. (Echoes of the Past, p. 133)

And a good thing they did.

The wagon train was very lucky to be able to join up with the missionary party. Without the guidance of the trail guide — Thomas Fitzpatrick — hired by the missionaries, they probably would have gotten hopelessly and fatally lost.

Thomas Fitzpatrick, born in County Cavan, Ireland, had been a mountain man, fur trapper, and trail guide in the Rocky Mountains for twenty years. He spoke several Indian languages and knew the geography (like the location of South Pass).

The missionaries were led by Father Pierre Jean De Smet, a Belgian Jesuit who spent many years working among the American Indians. In 1841 he was on his way, with two other priests and three lay brothers, to minister to the Flathead Indians. He established St. Mary’s Mission on the Bitterroot River near Missoula, Montana. Bidwell described him as follows:

He was genial, of fine presence, and one of the saintliest men I have ever known, and I cannot wonder that the Indians were made to believe him divinely protected. He was a man of great kindness and great affability under all circumstances; nothing seemed to disturb his temper. (Echoes of the Past, p. 114)

More information on Father De Smet can be found in this article from Historic St. Mary’s Mission and Museum.

The adventures of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party didn’t officially start until John Bidwell was elected secretary on May 18th and began keeping his journal. Up until that point we can’t put a date on the various events that led up to the journey. But Bidwell filled us in on his experiences in two other accounts.

In 1877 the historian and indefatigable collector Hubert Howe Bancroft sent  S. S. Boynton to take down Bidwell’s dictation of his journey. Boynton at the time was  principal of the Oroville schools, and later became editor of the Oroville Register. The dictation is titled “California 1841: An Immigrant’s Recollections of a Trip Across the Plains.” Anyone who wants to read it can find it in The Bidwell-Bartleson Party, edited by Doyce B. Nunis, or on microfilm at Meriam Library Special Collections (if you live here in Butte County).

Nunis’s book also contains Bidwell’s account, written in 1890 for the Century Magazine, titled “The First Emigrant Train to California.” Another place to find this is in Echoes of the Past, which collects all three articles on California life dictated by Bidwell for the Century. Bidwell’s journal account is also in Nunis’s book, as well as every other account, even if it is only a page or two, by a member of the group.

Can you see the original journal? No, unfortunately.

During his spare time in February and March of 1842 Bidwell copied out the journal and added his observations of California. Then he sent it back to Missouri to an unknown friend, and that friend had it printed up as a guidebook. How did he get the copy back to Missouri? He couldn’t just pop it in the mail. He probably sent it east with Joseph Chiles, another member of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party who returned to Missouri in 1842.

Sometime in 1843, ’44, or ’45 the journal was published as a pamphlet, by an unknown printer. This became the first overland guidebook to California. Only one copy is still in existence–-the copy carried by George McKinstry when he emigrated to California in 1846. It now resides in the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. It has been printed by the Bancroft in their keepsake series and that can be found (again) at Meriam Library Special Collections, or other rare book collections.

Bidwell’s own original journal — that’s long lost. Sigh.

No one of the party knew anything about mountaineering and scarcely anyone had ever been into the Indian Territory, yet a large majority felt that we were fully competent to go anywhere no matter what they difficulties might be or how numerous and warlike the Indians.

We heard before starting, however, that a party of Catholic missionaries from St. Louis going to the Flathead Indians under the auspices of Father De Smet were soon expected and that they had for their guide the experienced Captain Fitzpatrick.

The more prudent advised waiting for the missionary party and finally with much persuasion they prevailed on the others to wait. (The 1877 Bidwell Dictation)

“More prudent” — that would describe John Bidwell.

But what confidence these men had in their abilities to take on anything. No map, no guide, no trail experience — but so what? Let’s get going! How hard can it be?

Little did they know . . . .

Thomas “Broken-Hand” Fitzpatrick in his later years.

Our ignorance of the route was complete. We knew that California lay west, and that was the extent of our knowledge. Some of the maps consulted, supposed of course to be correct, showed a lake in the vicinity of where Salt Lake now is; it was represented as a long lake, three or four hundred miles in extent, narrow and with two outlets, both running into the Pacific Ocean, either apparently larger than the Mississippi River.

Here is a map from 1826 that is the kind Bidwell would have seen. It shows two large rivers flowing from Lake Timpanogos unimpeded to the Pacific Ocean. One river is labeled R. Timpanogos and the other Los Mongos River. The R. S. Buenaventura flows from the smaller Salt Lake. Note the total absence of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Keep in mind that there was next to nothing known about this region up until the 1840s.

1826 Map by Henry Schenck Tanner of North America (detail) Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4410.ct003214/

Another version:

An intelligent man with whom I boarded — Elam Brown — possessed a map that showed these rivers to be large, and he advised me to take tools along to make canoes, so that if we found the country so rough that we could not get along with our wagons we could descend one of those rivers to the Pacific. (John Bidwell, Echoes of the Past, p. 111)

Nope. (Shooting the Rapids, 1871 by Frances Anne Hopkins)

Bidwell doesn’t say whether they took along any boat-building tools. They would have had basic tools along with them anyway, but they weren’t going to be building any boats or floating down to the Pacific Ocean.

The Oregon-California Trails Association has just put out a new “This Day in History” video honoring “John Bidwell, Sapling Grove, and the Bidwell-Bartleson Party.”

It’s a nice little video, about 5 minutes long. Worth your time.

One note on the date: May 12 is about the date Bidwell and a few others arrived at Sapling Grove, which was supposed to be the rendezvous point. They moved on to the Kansas River and did not officially organize themselves, partner with the missionaries, and hit the trail until May 19th. That is the date when Bidwell’s journal begins.

Every day for a week or more, wagons arrived with the same object in view. At last we took steps to see how many had arrived and found our numbers to be sixty-nine. Among those were about fifteen women and children. All were anxious for a start. (1877 Bidwell Dictation)

For the next few days, one or two wagons would come each day, and among the recruits were three families from Arkansas. Every one furnished his own supplies. The party consisted of sixty-nine, including men, women, and children. (The First Emigrant Train (Echoes of the Past))

They were mostly young single men, like John Bidwell and Michael Nye. A few older men, like George Henshaw, and middle-aged John Bartleson, who became captain of the wagon train.

Ben Kelsey in later years

The families were Samuel and Lucy Kelsey and their five children, Benjamin and Nancy Kelsey and their little girl Martha Ann, and Richard Williams and wife and their teenage daughter, who married Zed Kelsey on the trail.

There were actually four Kelsey brothers on the journey — the other one was Andrew.

Lucy Kelsey’s sister, a widow named Mrs. Gray and her child were also part of the group. Mrs. Gray would find a husband along the way as well.

Nancy Kelsey in later years

That doesn’t add up to fifteen women and children, but I don’t think Bidwell was paying close attention to how many children there were. He just remembered a passel of little kids.