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Four years after the journey of Whitman and Spaulding to
the northwest a missionary of different faith but no less devoted to the
service of God and man entered the confines of the original Uinta County.
He was Father de Smet, a member of the Society of Jesus, who had come as a
young man from his home in Belgium to work in the missionary field. After
some years spent among the Indians of the southwest, in April, 1840, he
left St. Louis to join an expedition of the American Fur Company, with the
purpose of taking the gospel to the Flathead Indians. He was thirty-nine
years old at this time.
On the 30th of June the fur traders reached Green River, near the mouth of
Horse Creek, and a large rendezvous soon assembled. The news of the coming
of the "Black Robe," as the Indians called Father de Smet, had preceded
him, and a band of Flatheads, lead by Chief Big face, was sent out to meet
him. An Iroquois Indian by the name of Ignace, who came with him as guide
from St. Louis, acted as interpreter. A large number of Indians were
attracted to the spot. After a week spent by Father de Smet in preaching
and giving instruction, there took place one of the most impressive
ceremonies recorded of the West. It is described by the reverend father in
the following words : "On Sunday, the 5th of July, I had the consolation
of celebrating the holy sacrifice of Mass sub Dio. The altar was placed on
an elevation, and surrounded by boughs and garlands of flowers. I
addressed the congregation in French and in English, and spoke also by an
interpreter to the Flatheads and Snake Indians. It was a spectacle truly
moving for the heart of a missionary, to behold an assembly of so many
different nations, who all assisted at our holy mysteries with great
satisfaction. The Canadians sang hymns in French and Latin, and the
Indians in their native tongue. It was truly a Catholic worship. * * *
This place has been called since that time, by the French-Canadians, La
Prairie de la Messe."1
The scene is one to stir the imagination-the wild and majestic
surroundings, the awe of the children of the wilderness at this new manner
of communing with the Great Spirit and the solemnity and gratitude of the
self-sacrificing priest over the first fruits of his toil, combine to make
a picture that stands out in contrast to the rough life of the frontier.
With earnest reverence the spectators follow the service and listen to the
admonitions of the priest, and then crave his blessing before they part.
The spot where this service was performed is two miles above the town of
Daniel.2
The following day, in company with the Flathead chiefs, Father de Smet
proceeded on his westward way. They ascended Horse Creek, crossed the
range to John Day's River, and followed it down to the Snake and to
Pierre's Hole, where the main body of the Indians was encamped, awaiting
his coming. Father de Smet spent a few weeks with them and returned to St.
Louis.
In April of the next year, in accordance with a promise made to the
Indians, Father de Smet returned, with five other missionaries, traveling
to the Snake by way of the Green River crossing and Fort Hall. It was not
long before a mission was founded near the present city of Missoula,
Montana, and later one among the Coeur d'Alene Indians. For the next six
years he was engaged in work among the Indians in Wyoming, Montana and
Idaho, and his labors in promoting peace between the Blackfeet and the
Flatheads were so successful as to win f or him the thanks of Franklin
Pierce, President of the United States. In 1858 Father de Smet once again
passed through Wyoming, this time coming as far south in what is now Uinta
County as Fort Bridger, with Johnson's army.3
His counsels and companionship were highly valued by officers and men.
In 1868 Father de Smet once more left the monastery in St. Louis, where
his last days were spent, to confer in behalf of the government and the
Sioux Nation. On this trip he visited Cheyenne and met old acquaintances,
one of whom was Jim Bridger. He died five years later and was mourned by
white men and red.
Several bands of missionaries and a few settlers made the trip to Oregon
in the six years following the journey of Whitman and Spaulding, but the
number did not reach two hundred. Some came in wagons and brought their
families, but the majority traveled with pack horses. In 1842 Whitman, in
company with Amos Lovejoy, made his heroic trip from Oregon to the
national capital in the dead of winter to plead for the settlement of the
northwest, upon which, according to the treaty of 1818, the claim of the
United States depended. At Fort Hall the deep snow
compelled them to leave the usual route and go far to the south. Whitman
arrived in Washington March 3, 1843, succeeded in impressing on President
Tyler and Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, the importance of his
mission, and the next spring started west with an emigrant train of a
thousand men, women and children. They had two hundred wagons and a
thousand head of cattle, and they carried implements and seed grain. The
next year about fifteen hundred traveled the Oregon Trail, and in 1845
three thousand. The Whitman Massacre, on November 29, 1847, lent a new
impetus to the settlement of the northwest, and led to the greatest
movement of home-seekers that the world has ever seen. Within the next six
years over three hundred thousand people were in the northwest.4
In 1842 the government, impressed with the importance of the west as
something more than a field for fur traders and adventurers, sent out
Captain John C. Fremont at the head of a well-equipped party to make a
survey of the mountain roads. His first expedition crossed South Pass and
turned back after exploring the country east of the Wind River Range.
Fremont's report on- returning to Washington resulted in his being sent
out again the following year. Fitzpatrick, whom the Indians called "Man
with the Broken Hand," was chosen guide, and with nineteen men went in
advance to Fort Hall, where he was joined by Fremont and the rest of the
party the first of September. Their route from Green River was practically
the same as the present Oregon Short Line Railroad, up the valley of Ham's
Fork and over the divide to Twin Creek, which they followed down to Bear
River. The early fur traders bad often gone this way. These were the first
United States soldiers to cross the Rockies, and they brought with them a
twelve-pound brass howitzer that inspired terror in the hearts of the
Arapahoes, who followed them up after having raided Fort Bridger.5
Fremont has been called "The Trail Maker", but, as one of our Wyoming
historians points out, "Map Maker" would more accurately describe him. He
followed old trails, but his were the first authorized maps of the West.6
They were published in great numbers by the government, and a heavy demand
for them was created by the growing interest in western colonization.
About eight miles north of Evanston rises a mountain which bears the name
of Medicine Butte, bestowed upon it by the Indians before the coming of
white men. It is an outstanding landmark for many miles, and on a clear
day it is possible to see from its summit the Teton peaks, more than a
hundred and fifty miles to the north. On its rounded summit there is a
pile of stones that is commonly called "Fremont's Monument". As has been
seen, Fremont's survey did not approach nearer than thirty miles to this
spot, but old settlers in the neighborhood believe that some of the party
climbed the slopes for the purpose of observation, and piled up the first
stones, to which each visitor is constrained by custom to add a
contribution of at least one.
Between the years of 1849 and 1858 expeditions led by Stansbury and by
Simpson were sent out to explore the country through which the Oregon
Trail passed. Their reports gave the first exact knowledge of the geology
of the country, and are still authority. Both were officers in the United
States Army, as was also Beckwith, who was sent out to report the
feasibility of a railroad route across the mountains. The vision of the
iron link between the Atlantic and Pacific was already dawning on the
minds of men, though its consummation was more than a decade away.
Meanwhile the stream of immigration flowed on. The trains stopped at Fort
Laramie and Fort Bridger to buy provisions at exorbitant prices, and as
the years rolled on other trading places were built, but none within the
region we are studying. The swelling tide deepened and widened the trail,
the dead were buried by the roadside, but no other lasting impress was
left upon the mountain region save for the hatred sowed in the breasts of
their savage foes, that was to bear fruit in later years.
From South Pass the main road led to Green River, near the mouth of the
Sandy, and dipped south to Fort Bridger. From here it turned northwest to
Fort Hall. There were many cutoffs, as the shorter routes were called, but
the great majority of emigrants wisely kept to the main road. Those who
did not often paid for their daring with their lives.
Experience taught the necessity of organization, and the caravans, for the
most part, moved under the strictest discipline. By night the camps were
well guarded, and scouts rode ahead by day to watch for savage foes.
Bridger and Fitzpatrick escorted many trains through Wyoming.
The ill-fated Donnar party was the first to attempt the cutoff from Fort
Bridger to California through Utah. It consisted of thirty-two people who
had left their homes in Sagamon, Illinois, on the 15th of April, 1846, and
other emigrants who had joined them on their way, making eighty-one in
all. At Fort Bridger they formed a well-organized train under the
leadership of George Donnar, and, with a good stock of provisions, started
out on what was called the Hastings Cutoff. They were seven days in
reaching Weber Canyon by way of Echo Canyon.7
The tragic story of the hardships that befell the Donnar party does not
properly belong to this history, save as another added illustration of the
folly of leaving the beaten trails. It was not until March, 1847, that
they were rescued from their winter camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains,
after thirty-six of their number had perished from hunger and cold.
On the 17th of July, 1846, was ratified the treaty between the United
States and Great Britain, ceding the Northwest Territory to the United
States. It included that part of Wyoming lying west of the crest of the
Rockies and north of the 42nd parallel. In 1848 this cession was organized
as the Northwest Territory, and President Polk appointed General Joseph
Lane first governor.
In 1848 the gold
rush to California began. Twenty thousand people traveled the Oregon
Trail in the early spring, and the number was greatly increased by
midsummer. All sorts and conditions of humanity were represented, and
great was the variety of vehicles, ranging from the favorite prairie
schooner, drawn by from four to eight oxen, to the frailest of carts. When
horses, mules and oxen died by the wayside, cows were often used as draft
animals. From the discarded articles found in later years along the way,
it is clear that many of the travelers had but little conception of the
hardships of the journey. Mahogany furniture, heavy trunks and other
cumbersome objects have been picked up within the bounds of Uinta County,
and many are the unmarked graves. In the summer of 1852, the year of the
cholera, over five thousand people died on the Oregon Trail.8
The way in which this crisis was met showed the metal of the emigrants ;
some were terrorized, and advocated leaving the victims by the wayside,
but the great majority proved their fitness as builders of the new West by
faithfully standing by the stricken ones. The train in which John T. Slate
with his wife and five children crossed was an example of the contending
elements of self-preservation and fidelity to trust, in which the latter
won out. Mrs. Slate, maternal grandmother of Rev. J. F. Vernon, formerly
of Evanston and now missionary of Alaska, was among the stricken ones. She
was cared f or as well as circumstances permitted, and recovered. Mr.
Vernon's grandfather on his father's side traveled the same road one year
later, and both families settled in the state of Washington.
One of the most interesting historic documents of the West is Independence
Rock, on the Sweetwater, on which are inscribed the names of hundreds of
emigrants and which Father de Smet aptly called the "Great Register of the
Desert." Only second in importance, is Names' Rock, a light-colored
boulder about twenty feet high and one hundred feet wide, that stands
seven miles north of the mouth of Fontenelle Creek and about six miles
west of Green River. The meadows below were the camping place of many
travelers, who climbed the hill to cut in the soft rock names and dates,
many of which are still legible. The name of the scout Jim Bridger is here
inscribed, either by a companion, as he could not write, or by some
subsequent traveler.
In the early spring of 1857 Capt. Frederick West Lander, an engineer in
the Department of the Interior, was sent out to explore the country west
of South Pass for the purpose of determining the shortest practicable
route to the Pacific- He made a pa king survey as far as Point of Rocks on
the western boundary of Idaho, and laid out a road that shortened the
distance materially. From South Pass it led northwest over the Wind River
range to New Fork of Green River, which it followed to a point a little
north of the present site of Big Piney. From here it ran over Thompson's
Pass to Salt River and on to Grey's Lake.9
The estimated cost of this road was seventy thousand dollars. A band of
workmen, under a contractor by the name of William F. McGraw, had been
sent out with a military escort the previous fall, but reached South Pass
too late to begin work. During the winter the party scattered, some
returning to the east and others going on to the Pacific Coast. In the
summer of 1858 work was begun. Although one of the avowed objects of this
road was to avoid the Mormon settlements, it is interesting to note that
the forty men who were engaged for the work were from Salt Lake. Twenty
miles of heavy pine forest was cleared, ten miles of willows, and upward
of four hundred thousand cubic yards of earth was excavated.10
The emigrant guide issued that year by the government calls attention to
the following reasons why travelers should take this new cutoff, namely,
shortened distance, good feed, wood, water; no tolls, and fewer steep
grades. Many trains did take this route, but after the arrival of
Johnson's army and the settlement of the Mormon question, the main tide
turned again to the old traveled highway, and the road through Salt Lake
grew in favor with California-bound travelers. The Lander Cutoff can still
be traced, and many sections of it are in use today.
In 1913 the Legislature of Wyoming appropriated the sum of $2,500 to place
appropriate markers along the old Oregon Trail. A committee of three was
appointed by the governor to carry out this work, the members being Capt.
H. C. Nickerson of Lander, president, A. H. Parshall of Cheyenne and Mrs.
B. B. Brooks of Casper. They worked in conjunction with the Sons and
Daughters of the American Revolution. The first secretary was Mrs. H. B.
Patten, and she was succeeded by Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard. Subsequent
legislatures have appropriated the sum of five hundred dollars at each
session. The veteran Ezra Meeker, who traveled the road in 1850 in an ox
cart, has twice retraced his steps in more modern conveyances, and has
been of untold help in marking its course. In October, 1924, at the age of
ninety-three, he made the trip from Vancouver to Dayton, Ohio, by airplane
with Lieutenant Kelley of the United States service. The following markers
have been set up within the boundaries of the old Uinta County : About
three miles northeast of Fontenelle a slate slab inscribed "Oregon Trail
1843-1914." In Township 24, Range 113, there has been chiseled on a
sandstone bluff "Oregon Trail 1843." On Slate Creek, Township 23, Range
113, a slate slab is marked "Oregon Trail 1843-1914." At Emigrant Springs,
near the postoffice called Supply, is a slate slab marked "Oregon Trail,
1843-1915." In the sagebrush near this stone are the graves of several
emigrants with unmarked slabs above them. Near the crossing of Rock Creek,
about eight miles from Cokeville, a solid granite stone has the
inscription "Oregon Trail, 1843-1915." The little city of Cokeville has
two stones on the old trail. On the eastern border of the town is a pillar
about nine feet high, appropriately inscribed. The other is near Border,
just south of Bear River on the Wyoming Idaho line. A fine monument of
cobblestones set in cement has been erected at Fort Bridger, and bears the
following inscription on a bronze tablet donated by the State : "Fort
Bridger, established as a trading post, 1843. U. S. Military Post on the
Oregon Trail, June 10, 1858, to October 6, 1890. This monument is erected
by the State of Wyoming and a few interested residents. 1914."
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To the Rev. F. J. Barbelin, dated St. Louis University,
February 4, 1841, published as letter 1, of "Letters and Sketches."
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On November 7, 1922, Father Short, Father Moreton,
Father Schillenger and Father Welch met with citizens of Daniel for the
purpose of marking the location of the Prairie of the Mass. Reverend N.
S. Thomas, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming, was the author of
the movement. Bishop Thomas possesses the finest and most complete
historical library in the state concerning early Wyoming, and has been
interested in spreading information.
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Levi Edgar Young, "Father de Smet."
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Meecham, "Old Oregon Trail."
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Fremont, "Memoirs of My Life."
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Hebard, "Path Breakers from River to Ocean."
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Levi Edgar Young, "The Story of the Donner Party."
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Meecham, "Old Oregon Trail."
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J. Cecil Alter, "Old Oregon Trail."
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Ibid.
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