Seventy Years on the Frontier

by Alexander Majors

We also did a large business in freighting in 1856. I think that year we had about three hundred to three hundred and fifty wagons and teams at work, and our profits for 1855 and 1856 footed up about three hundred thousand dollars. This sum included our wagons, oxen, and other freighting and transportation outfits, valuing them at what we thought they would bring the beginning of the freighting season the next year.

In 1857 the Government extended the contract to Majors & Russell for one year longer, and it was during this year the United States Government determined to send an army to Utah to curtail the power that Brigham Young was extending over the destiny of that country; many complaints having reached Washington through the Government officials who had been sent to the Territory to preside as judges in the United States Courts. This resulted in a very great increase of transportation that year, and great difficulties were encountered, to begin with, which required quite an increase in the facilities for transportation, which had to be very hurriedly brought together. Before all the Government freight reached Fort Leavenworth, it became too late for trains to reach the headquarters of the army before cold weather set in, in the high altitude of Fort Bridger and that portion of the country where the army was in winter quarters; therefore many of the animals perished on account of having to be kept, under army orders, where grass and water were sometimes scarce, and they suffered more or less from severe cold weather. The result was great loss of the work-animals and an entire loss of the previous two years' profits.

A party of Mormons, under command of Col. Lott Smith, had been sent out by the Mormon authorities in the rear of Johnston's army to cut off his supplies. They captured and burned three of our trains, two on the Sandy, just east of Green River, and one on the west bank of Green River. They gave the captain of each train the privilege of taking one of his best wagons and teams and loading it with supplies, to return home or back to the starting point. They committed no outrage whatever toward the men, and, as soon as the captain of each train told them he had all the food necessary to supply him to get back to the starting point, they told him to abandon the train, and they were set on fire and everything burned that was consumable. The captains of the trains, with their teamsters, returned to the States in safety. The cattle were driven off by the Mormons, and those that were not used for beef by the hungry men were returned in the summer to the company after peace had been made between the Mormons and the Government. The loss to the army was about five hundred thousand pounds of Government supplies. This loss put the army upon short rations for that winter and spring, until they could be reached with supplies in the spring of 1858.

That spring, our firm, under the name of Russell, Majors & Waddell, obtained a new contract from the United States Government to carry Government freight to Utah for the years 1858-59. That year the Government ordered an immense lot of freight, aggregating 16,000,000 pounds, most of which had to be taken to Utah. We had to increase the transportation from three or four hundred wagons and teams we had previously owned to 3,500 wagons and teams, and it required more than forty thousand oxen to draw the supplies; we also employed over four thousand men and about one thousand mules.

Our greatest drawback that year was occasioned by floods and heavy rains upon the plains, which made our trains move tardily in the outset. We succeeded admirably, however, considering the vast amount of material we had to get together and organize, which we could not have done had we not had so many years' experience, previous to this great event, in the freighting enterprise; and especially was this so with me, for I had had, previous to this, a great many years' experience in handling men and teams, even before I crossed the plains ten years before. We succeeded this year in carrying everything to the army in Utah, fifty miles south of Salt Lake City, to Camp Floyd, the headquarters of Sidney Johnston's command, a distance of 1,250 miles.

After unloading the wagons at Camp Floyd, they were taken to Salt Lake City and placed as near as they could stand to each other in the suburbs of the city, and covered many acres of ground, where they remained for one year or more, when our agent sold them to the Mormon authorities for $10 apiece, they having cost us at the manufacturers' $150 to $175 apiece. The Mormons used the iron about them for the manufacture of nails. The oxen we sent to Skull Valley and other valleys near Camp Floyd, known to be good winter quarters for cattle and mules. During the year 1859, while our teams were at Camp Floyd we selected 3,500 head as suitable to drive to California and put on the market, and they were driven to Ruby Valley, in Nevada, where it was intended they should remain, that being considered a favorable winter locality; and in the spring of 1860 they were to be driven to California, the intention being to let them graze on the wild oats and clover in the valleys of the Sacramento, and convert them into beef-cattle when fully ready for the market. A very few days after the herders reached the valley with them, which was late in November, a snow-storm set in and continued more or less severe, at intervals, until it covered the ground to such a depth that it was impossible for the cattle to get a particle of subsistence, and in less than forty days after the animals were turned out in the valley they were lying in great heaps frozen and starved to death. Only 200 out of the 3,500 survived the storm. They were worth at the time they were turned into the valley about $150,000, as they were a very superior and select lot of oxen. This was the largest disaster we met with during the years 1858 and 1859.

A ROUGH TRAIL.

In 1857 the Indians attacked the herders who had charge of about one thousand head on the Platte River, west of Fort Kearney, which is now called Kearney City, in Nebraska, killing one of the herders and scattering the cattle to the four winds. These were also a complete loss.

We had very little trouble with the Indians in 1857, 1858, and 1859 in any way, owing to the fact that Johnston's army, consisting of about five thousand regulars, besides the teamsters, making in all about seven thousand well-armed men, had passed through the country in 1857, and they had seen such a vast army, with their artillery, that they were completely intimidated, and stayed at a very respectful distance from the road on which this vast number of wagons and teams traveled. Each one of our wagons was drawn by six yoke, or twelve oxen, and contained from five to six thousand pounds of freight, and there was but one wagon to each team. The time had not yet come when, what was afterward adopted, trail wagons were in use. This means two or three wagons lashed together and drawn by one team. Twenty-five of our wagons and teams formed what was called a train, and these trains were scattered along the road at intervals of anywhere from two to three miles, and sometimes eight to ten miles, and even greater distances, so as to keep out of the way of each other.