Joel Palmer - Palmers Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains, 1845-1846

1748-1846

Volume XXX

Early Western Travels

1748-1846

A Series of Annotated Reprints of some of the best
and rarest contemporary volumes of travel, descriptive
of the Aborigines and Social and
Economic Conditions in the Middle
and Far West, during the Period
of Early American Settlement

Edited with Notes, Introductions, Index, etc., by

Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.

Editor of "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents," "Original
Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," "Hennepin's
New Discovery," etc.

Volume XXX

Palmer's Journal of Travels over the Rocky Mountains,
1845-1846

Cleveland, Ohio
The Arthur H. Clark Company
1906

THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Lakeside Press
R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY
CHICAGO

In the wake of the pathfinders, fur-traders, Indian scouts, missionaries, scientific visitors, and foreign adventurers came the ultimate figure among early Western travellers, the American pioneer settler, the fore-runner of the forces of occupation and civilization. This concluding volume in our series is, therefore, fitly devoted to the record of an actual home-seeker, and founder of new Western communities.

The significant feature of American history has been the transplanting of bodies of colonists from one frontier to a newer frontier. In respect to the Oregon country, our interest therein is enhanced not only by the great distance and the abundant perils of the way, but also by the political result in securing the territory to the United States, and the growth of a prosperous commonwealth in the Far Northwest corner of our broad domain. In several previous volumes of our series we have witnessed the beginnings of Oregon civilization. Two of our travellers, Franchre and Ross, have graphically detailed the Astoria episode, giving us, not without some literary skill, the skeleton of facts which Irving's masterful pen clothed with living flesh and healthful color; in Townsend's pages we found an enduring picture of the rgime of the all-powerful Hudson's Bay Company; De Smet, with faithful, indeed loving, touches has portrayed the vanishing aborigines, whose sad story has yet fully to be toldeventually, when the last vestige of their race has gone, we shall come to recognize the tale as the sorriest chapter in our annals; Farnham shrewdly narrates the sharp transition to American occupancy; but Palmer tells us of the triumphant progress of the conquering pioneer, and in his pages the destiny of Oregon as an American state is clearly foreshadowed.

"Fifty-four forty, or fight," the belligerent slogan with regard to Oregon, adopted in the presidential campaign of 1844, was after all not so much a notice to the British government that the United States considered the Oregon country her own, beyond recall, as an appeal to the pioneers of the West to secure this vast inheritance by actual occupation. As such it proved a trumpet call to thousands of vigorous American farmers, most of them already possessed of comfortable homes in the growing communities of the Middle West.

"I have an uncle," declared one of the pioneers to Dr. John McLoughlin, Hudson's Bay factor on the Pacific coast, "who is rich enough to buy out your company and all this territory."

"Indeed!" replied the doctor, courteously, "who is he?"

"Uncle Sam," gayly responded the emigrant, with huge enjoyment in his well-worn witticism. It was at the supposed behest of this same "Uncle Sam" that farms were sold, wagons and oxen purchased, outfits prepared, and long caravans of permanent settlers slowly and painfully crossed the vast plains and rugged mountains lying between the comfortable settlements of the "Old Northwest"the "Middle West" of our dayand the new land of promise in the Far Northwest of the Pacific Slope.

The emigration of 1845 exceeded all that had gone before. That of 1843, eight hundred strong, had startled the Indians, and surprised the staid officials of the Hudson's Bay Company. That of 1844 had occupied the fertile valleys from Puget Sound on the north to Calapooia on the south. That of 1845 determined that the territory should be the home of Americans; it doubled the population already on the ground, reinforced the compact form of government, and laid broad and deep the foundations of new American commonwealths.

Our author, Joel Palmer, a shrewd, genial farmer from Indiana, was a leader among these emigrants of 1845. Born across the Canada line in 1810, he nevertheless was of New York parentage, and American to the core. In early life his family removed to Indiana, where Joel founded a home at Laurel, in northwest Franklin County. By the suffrages of his neighbors Palmer was sent to the state legislature in 1844, but the following year determined to make a tour to Oregon for personal observation, before deciding to remove his family thither and cast his future lot with its pioneer settlers. Arrived on the Missouri frontier, he found that the usual wagon train had gone in advance. However, he overtook the great body of the emigrants in time to assist in the organization of the caravan on Big Soldier's Creek, in Kansas.

Gathered from all parts of the Middle West, with no attempt at organization nor any pre-arrangement whatsoever, the emigrants, who had not yet forgotten the frontier traditions of their fathers, proved to be a homogeneous body of about three thousand alert, capable travellers, provided in general with necessities and even comforts for the hardships of the long journey; indeed, after the manner of their Aryan forbears in the great westerly migrations of the past, they were accompanied by herds of cattle, to form the basis of agricultural life in the new land. Each of the several hundred wagons was a travelling house, provided with tents, beds, and cooking utensils; clothing and food were also carried, sufficient not only for the journey out, but for subsistence through the first year, always the crucial stage of agricultural pioneering. The draught cattle were largely oxen, but many of the men rode horses, and others drove them with their cows and bulls.