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Text originally published in 1953 under the same title.
Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publishers Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
THE FIRST OVERLAND MAIL
BY
ROBERT E. PINKERTON
Illustrated by Paul Lantz
1
THE STAGECOACH WAS SUPREME in 1801. IT carried the United States mail, and its passengers were important people bound on business or government affairs. Others walked or rode horses, and few went more than a few miles from home. Freight moved slowly behind ox teams.
The glamor and romance of travel and far places centered in the stagecoach, in its speed and the dash of its horses, in the clatter of its passing. Men in fields waved their hats. Children in villages shouted, Here she comes! Dogs in towns raced beside the spinning wheels. Men gathered at stations where teams were changed. Women looked from their weaving to the grandfathers clock and said, Henry Buckleys on time, as usual.
It was the horse in 1801, and nothing except the horse if you were in a hurry, but it was the drivers that people watched and admired. Most were quiet men, aware of their responsibility and careful of their horses and keeping schedule. Others added the quality of an actor. Theyd save their teams for a final burst of speed, take the stage into town on the gallop and come to a dramatic stop. Departures were more theatrical with fresh teams racing madly.
In November of that same year, 1801, John Butterfield was born on his fathers farm west of Albany, New York, and if he hadnt lived on a stage route he might have become a farmer as did most of his acquaintances. Before he could walk, his mother would carry him to the road when the stage was due. As the horses dashed past, the child grew more and more excited.
I often wondered if I marked him, doing that, she once said. He got so worked up over it.
After John Butterfield could use his legs, he kept his own time schedule, as young children and animals do so accurately. Only in the worst weather did he fail to stand beside the road when the stage went by. Stage drivers began to notice him. Hed be there, rain or snow or freezing weather, waving his arms. When John was five, Henry Buckley blew his long coaching horn a half mile from the Butterfield farm. As this was sounded only on approach to stage stations, the boy listened in ecstasy. He felt suddenly that he was part of stagecoaching. Next day he led his mother to hear the entrancing music.
Looks grand, dont it? she said, awed by the special salute to her son and by the drivers lifted hat.
It goes so fast, the boy said.
Years later, Mrs. Butterfield told of this. I knew right then nothing else would ever satisfy him, said she. John was going to be a stagecoach driver.
John talked to his father of his excitement.
Whats a stagecoach without horses? Daniel Butterfield asked. Like a preacher whos lost his tongue. Or a skillet without a fire. If its stagecoachin you want, learn what makes em go. Its a four-legged critter called a horse. Quit lookin at the coaches and look at what keeps em runnin.
Next day he went with his son when the horn sounded.
Dont look at the people in the wagon, he said. Or at Henry Buckley. Whered he be without horses? Watch their footworkthe off leaders spavined. Watch how theyre built. Near wheel horse is short coupled, nice mare. Watch their ears. That tells if an animals got git-up-and-go. Its the horses that draws the stages.
After that John studied their conformation and leg action, how they carried their heads. His father talked to him of draft breeds, of lighter and faster strains, and explained the care of horses, how to look for diseases or injuries, how to judge the temperament of an animal and how to handle it. When John was ten years old, he knew a great deal about horses. Also at ten he was a hard working farm boy, being spared only to go to the country school. He arrived breathless from morning chores and hurried home for the evening work and care of horses.
More and more his father was aware he had a future stagecoach driver as a son, and that was all right. It meant a step up from the drudgery of farm work. Nor did John, when he was a boy, think past driving a coach. This was the most exciting thing in his world, and he wanted a part in it.
His world was not large, and much of it was little known. In 1801, when he was born, the United States extended only to the Mississippi River. Beyond the Appalachian Mountains was a vast territory into which few had penetrated. More than two-thirds of our present nation was in the hands of European states, and Americans knew nothing of it. The new Republic clung to the Atlantic seaboard, but even Florida and the Gulf of Mexico coast belonged to Spain. In the west was a vast territory owned by France, and beyond that was another great expanse in Spanish domain that extended to the Pacific.
When John Butterfield was two years old, his country negotiated the Louisiana Purchase at a cost of $11,250,000. Napoleon Bonaparte evidently needed money or considered the land of little value. It extended from the Gulf of Mexico to the present Canadian border and included what we now know as Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, North and South Dakota; most of Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas; and even much of Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. No nation ever acquired so vast and rich a land for so littlefour cents an acre.
Not many Americans knew what this meant. They were busy making a living along the Atlantic seaboard. Only a few had dared cross the mountains into Western Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Most men, thinking of their farms and small businesses, saw no need for expansion.
The mechanical age dawned before John Butterfield was six years old, when Robert Fulton made the first steamboat voyage, from New York to Albany, 150 miles, in thirty-two hours. The War of 1812 occupied the countrys attention, and the small republic failed to look at its new rich lands in the west. In 1817 work was begun on the Erie Canal.
The nation grew slowly. In 1820 it had less than ten million people. In that year John Butterfield decided to leave the farm for stagecoaching. He got a job in Albany with the Parker Line which hired him to drum up business for its stages. Before he was twenty he was handling the reins, snapping the whip, dashing into and out of towns as Henry Buckley had done, but he was not satisfied.
