goldfields

John Bidwell and friends did some trading when they met with Fraeb’s company of hunters and trappers at the Green River rendezvous. In his journal Bidwell records some of the prices for goods:

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 Mackanaw 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.

I don’t imagine much cash traded hands. Instead the men would have been bartering. Perhaps Bidwell’s group still had items like sugar and pepper, gunpowder and lead to sell, and the mountain men had deerskins, moccasins, and flour and tobacco for those who had run out of supplies. Prices were high, but where else could they go to trade? If you needed it, you paid for it.

Saturday, 24th. Remained at this encampment and continued our traffic with the hunters. Chiles sold his oxen, 2 yoke, and wagon, another also was left.

The hunters, or fur trappers, bought all the alcohol brought by Bartleson and others, as well as other items, like Chiles’s wagon and ox team. Bidwell doesn’t say what they used to pay for it. It seems unlikely that they had money, but they probably had goods the travelers could use, such as weapons, ammunition, and clothing. Maybe this is where Bidwell picked up the buckskin suit he later says he was wearing.

The Rev. Joseph Williams described the party of hunters in his recollections:

We lay on the Green River bottom, where we fell in with Mr. Frap who was on a hunting expedition. This man, with nine or ten of his company, was afterwards killed in a skirmish with the Sioux Indians. His company was mostly composed of half-breeds, French, and Dutch, and all sorts of people collected together in the mountains, and were a wicked, swearing company of men.

In “The First Emigrant Train to California,” Bidwell relates what became of Fraeb’s party.

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.

Indeed, the alcohol and the resulting drunkenness would have drawn the attention of Indians. And since by the time Bidwell wrote this recollection he was a Prohibitionist, he does not fail to point the moral.

Thursday, 22nd. Descended Big Sandy about 12 miles and stopped where we found plenty of grass — this was very acceptable as our teams were already much jaded for the want of grass.

Gray returned this evening having found Trapp’s company, which consisted of about 20 men. They had returned to meet our company, though on their way to hunt buffalo, and were now encamped on Green river about 8 miles distant. Gray had suffered much in overtaking the trappers; his mule gave out, there being no water for a great distance, and he himself was reduced so much by hunger and thirst that he was unable to walk. He was therefore compelled to crawl upon his hands and feet, and at last came up with the company in the most forlorn situation imaginable–if they had been another half mile farther, he never could have reached them.

Poor John Gray! He nearly lost his life in pursuit of the fur trappers. If anyone could have found them, it was John Gray, the half-Mohawk, half-Scottish trapper and trail guide, but he was traversing some of the most  unforgiving territory in America. It was only his skill and knowledge of the wilderness that kept him alive.

The man that Bidwell here calls “Trapp,” was generally called “Frapp” by his men. A German-American from St. Louis, his name was actually Henry Fraeb. He was a veteran fur trapper and one of the founders, with Jim Bridger and William Sublette, of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.  The Rev. Joseph Williams called his outfit “a wicked, swearing company of men,” which is probably a pretty accurate description of the kind of men who lived far from civilization.

A drawing of two mountain men by Frederic Remington, captioned “I took ye for an Indian!”

Friday, 23rd. Went to Green river — distance 8 miles — spent the remainder of the day trading with the hunters.

Friday 16th. Traveled about 10 miles and encamped opposite the Wind River mountains where we were in full view of many lofty peaks glittering with eternal snow and frost under the blaze of a July sun.

Sunday, 18th. Left Sweet Water this morning, course SW. Crossed the divide which separates the water of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and after a travel of 20 miles reached Little Sandy, a branch of Green river – 1 buffalo was killed.

Leaving the Sweetwater River, the emigrants took the gradual climb up through South Pass, as a few wagons had done before them, and many, many more would do in the following years. As George R. Stewart wrote,”Here, at the summit of the Rocky Mountains, the very backbone of the continent, the grade was easy and the pass itself was more like a broad plain, so level that you were never sure when you passed from the Atlantic to the Pacific watershed.” (The California Trail)

South Pass–hardly the inspiring vista you expect for the Continental Divide.

Meanwhile the company awaited the return of John Gray, who had set off in search of the trappers who would surely be interested in the items (alcohol) that some members of the group had brought along to sell.

Stay tuned for more about the trappers and John Gray.

John Gray and W.G. Romaine had set out on July 6th to see if there were any fur-trappers camped at Green River, where the trappers usually had their rendezvous at this time of year. They didn’t find anyone, so the two men came back on the 13th. But other members of the party were anxious to find the trappers, since they had items that they wished to trade, so Gray set out once again on the 15th.

Thursday, 15th. As many of the company had articles of traffic which they wished to dispose of at Green river, a subscription was raised to recompense any who would go and find the trappers. John Gray started in pursuit of them, while the company marched on slowly, waiting for his return. Travelled about 6 miles today.

Gray was gone for a week and suffered a great deal in his search for the trappers. It would have killed a weaker man. I’ll write more about his ordeal when we get to the 22nd.

At this point in their journey they were traveling along the Sweetwater River and approaching South Pass and the Continental Divide.

Bidwell doesn’t mention it in his journal, but elsewhere he reveals that the “articles of traffic” were bottles or kegs of liquor. In The First Emigrant Train to California (Echoes of the Past, p. 119) Bidwell says:

Approaching Green River in the Rocky Mountains, it was found that some of the wagons, including Captain Bartleson’s, had alcohol on board, and that the owners wanted to find trappers in the Rocky Mountains to whom they might sell it. This was a surprise to many of us, as there had been no drinking on the way.

No drinking—because Bartleson was saving it up to sell to thirsty trappers. This was a bit of entrepreneurship that hadn’t occurred to young John Bidwell. Bidwell was not a teetotaler at this time in his life, but he never was a drinking man.

From John Bidwell’s journal for July 10, 1841:

“Saturday, 10th. Travelled about 14 miles and stopped to kill and dry meat. Buffalo began to grow scarce.”

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. On the 10th they decided to stay in place and spend a day or two hunting and drying meat.

Green River, Wyoming

They killed 6 or 7 the 10th, and 4 or 5 on the 11th. John Gray and William Romaine came back from a scouting expedition to the Green River on the 13th and reported that they found no game ahead. Meat on the hoof was running out just at the time they realized how much they would need it.

John Grey (Bidwell spelled it Gray) was hired by the Englishman W. G. Romaine as a guide for his summer tour of the American West. Grey was half Iroquois and half Scottish, a St. Regis Mohawk, born around 1795 in upstate New York.  His father, William L. Grey, had served as a soldier during the American Revolution and then married into the Mohawks of Akwesasne. John Grey also went by the Iroquois name of Ignace Hatchiorauquasha, St. Ignatius being his patron saint.

John Gray, as depicted by Nicholas Point, S.J.

Father Nicholas Point, one of the priests with Father DeSmet, drew this portrait of John Gray while on the trail. The smaller picture is of Gray’s wife. Father Point also drew a sketch of John Grey battling five grizzly bears.

The Catholic priests had a high opinion of Grey and his abilities. Father Gregory Mengarini records the following:

“So the sun rose and the sun set, and the end of our journey was still over a thousand miles away. Sometimes John Grey would say to me in the morning, “Father, so you see that speck in the distance? Today we must reach there.” “Then our day’s travel will be short,” I would answer. “We shall see,” he would say laughingly. And the hours of the morning would pass and we would be already journeying long under a scorching afternoon’s sun before that speck would achieve appreciable magnitude and distinctness of form.”

Grey entered the fur trade sometime around 1818, about the same time that he married his wife Marienne Netketichon, also a Mohawk. He was active in the fur trade for the next 25 years or so. He was considered a gifted leader who helped bridge the gap between Indians and white people.

Grey and Romaine, along with four other men, left the wagon train on July 25th to return to the United States. The trip with Romaine was probably the last of Grey’s excursions to the West, after which he retired to his home in Kansas City, Missouri. He was killed in 1848 in a dispute with a neighbor.

For more about John Grey, consult The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, by Leroy R. Hafen, or see the website of his great-great-great grandson Hunter Gray. (I removed the link because that website is no longer operative.)

From the Chico Enterprise Weekly, here is what you could expect on July 4, 1877:

The patriotic citizens of Chico, always ready to do homage to the birthday of a great and glorious Republic, made this the one hundred and first anniversary no exception. The weather was most favorable, with the sweet south wind coming in refreshing zephers to temper the sultry Summer sun. The joyous occasion was ushered in at midnight by the ringing of a merry peal from the city bells. At sunrise a salute was fired from the old cannon which has hone good service in this city for sixteen years, on many similar occasions, and the bells again took up the chorus, waking the unconscious sleeper to the fact that the day’s rejoicing had opened, and that loyal hearts were even now astir to welcome in the day and throw “old glory” to the breeze.

The 4th of July celebration was an all-day affair. A large crowd, including many from surrounding communities, assembled at the Armory and the Engine house to watch the mustering of the militia and the firemen. At 9:30 a.m. the festivities began with a parade through the streets, ending at “the grove near the Sierra flume.” The program that followed consisted of music by the Chico Brass Band, an invocation by the Rev. J.W. Ellis, a song from the Chico Glee Club, and the reading of the Declaration of Independence.

This was followed by a poem written for the occasion and read by George F. Nourse. The poem, The People’s Pioneer Line, was quite a lengthy one and was printed in the newspaper. It likened the nation to a railway line:

‘Tis just one hundred years and one ago,
With thirteen cars we pulled from Station One,
And under orders steamed along quite slow,
Making by day and night our wondrous run.
From time to time we lengthened out our train,
By adding on new freshly peopled cars,
Til now our line does thirty-eight maintain,
And on our flag there’s just as many stars.

The poem was followed by an oration, given by J.F. Hutton, “full of eloquence and original thought”and also printed in full. According to the newspaper report:

There was a breathless silence prevailed during the delivery of the oration, and at its close the audience broke forth in rapturous applause.  The benediction was then given and a rush was made for the tables.

The tables were laden with barbecued meat, several oxen having been cut into quarters and roasted for 12 hours. 1800 pounds of beef were served, along with a dozen hams, plenty of bread, and a variety of pickles.

Next came the “Comicalities” or the “Parade of Horribles,” described by the reporter as the “most ludicrous, comical and laughable exhibition we have seen in many a day.” After a solemn morning assembly and a good meal, it was time for some entertainment.

The Parade of Antiques and Horribles was an old New England custom in which folks dressed up in grotesque costumes and rode old nags to make fun of local dignitaries and current events. The morning parade was a stirring procession of soldiers, bands, and notable citizens in carriages. The afternoon parade was a parody to lighten the day’s mood.

The Chico parade featured a “burlesque on the City Police force and the City Fathers,” and a depiction of “Brother Jonathan and his family going West in an old cart.” “About half a dozen lengths of stovepipes on wheels burlesqued the artillery representation in the forenoon’s procession.”

I haven’t seen any photos of Chico’s Parade of Horribles, and I don’t know how long the custom lasted. Here’s a photo from a New England parade in the same period.

Photo of a Parade of Horribles from Wethersfield, Connecticut.

The Chico Independence Day celebration went on into the evening with more music, fireworks, and a grand ball. Our ancestors knew how to celebrate the 4th in style!