Seventy Years on the Frontier

by Alexander Majors

The most fatal days was when the cholera raged on the Western trails. Sometimes an entire train would be stricken and the captain would be compelled to corral the wagons until aid could be obtained from other caravans on the desert, then so called, or the teamsters recovered to continue the journey. Women sometimes helped to dig the graves and assisted in burying the dead, and have then taken the dead teamster's place at the wagon, driving the oxen until men could be employed.

With the opening of the Western trails for wagons, a larger number were buried in boxes made from rude pieces of lumber, or sometimes a part of the sideboard of the wagon was utilized for that purpose. The earlier expeditions were on horseback, and hence at that time the best that could be done would be to roll the body in a blanket. Only those in the East who have seen a burial at sea, although they may never have been on the plains, can realize the sadness and desolation of those who left their friends in the nameless graves of the old-time American desert. Many of the babies lived that were born on the California and Oregon trails, but the saddest of all was when the pioneer mother and babe were added to the thousands of nameless graves. The death-couch was a pile of straw and a few blankets in an old freight wagon. If the angels ever hover over the dying, there never would have been a more appropriate place for their ministrations. Nameless graves! Unknown! Only the drifting sands and the ceaseless flow of the mighty Western rivers know the place of their nameless dead. These are the famous cemeteries of the far West. There are no granite shafts or beautiful emblems carved in marble. Heroic men and women! They died unknown to fame and honor, but they gave their lives that a new civilization and a new empire might be born in the far West. The brave men, North and South, who fell in battle, have their graves marked "unknown" when they could not be identified, but no one knows where sleep the thousands who died on these trails. Even a slab to the "unknown" could not be placed, for who knows the grave? Farm-houses, fertile fields, cities and towns, and the rushing railway car now mark the spot. The path of civilization and the rapid building of empire in the West is their only living monument.

During the cholera days there was a heavy loss of life on the Western steamboats. On the Missouri River some of the old boats had a burial crew. At night-time, when the passengers were hardly aware of what was going on, the boat would stop near a sand-bar. The bodies of those who had died during the day were taken to the sand-bar, where they were quickly buried. What would have been the use of putting up even a pine board, for the rising waters would soon have washed it away?

But this is not simply Western history. It is a part of the history of the North and the South, for those who came never to return were from those sections. In many an Eastern and Southern home it is as unknown to them as to the people of the West where sleep their dead on those old trails of the Western empire.

The emigrants and gold-seekers were population in transit. Their burial-places were as fleeting. With the building of new towns and cities were established cemeteries, but there still continued to be the thousands of unknown graves. A father, brother, husband, or son dies away from home. His name may not have been known, or if it was, the pencil-marks on the pine board soon lost their tracing in the weather-beaten changes that time brings. How often in my own experience in the mining camps I have seen men die far away from the tender and loving care of mother, wife, and sister. How terrible then is the struggle with death! The desire to live and to see the old home-faces again becomes a passion. In their delirium the passion becomes a reality. In their feverish dreams I have seen the dying miner in his cabin fancy he was home again. He talks to his wife, and with words of endearment tells her that he has found a fortune in the mines. I never knew of a miner who, in the delirium of death, when he was talking of the mines, but what he was rich. He had struck the precious metal. He tells his people at home about it, and many a poor fellow has seemingly died content, founded on the fancy that he had a mine and that his wife and family would always have plenty. Out of many instances I will relate but one.

A young man from Galena, Ill., eleven years ago, was taken sick and soon the fever was upon him. He grew rapidly worse, but bravely fought the pale reaper, for he wanted to see home again. But courage was not equal to the task. The poor fellow had to die, and when the fever was at its height, he imagined that he was with his wife and baby. How tenderly he spoke to his young wife. He thought he had a rich mine, and told her where it was located. Then he imagined that his pillow was his baby, and that he was running his fingers through the child's curly hair, and would fondle the child up to his bosom. As I gazed on the bronze and weather-beaten faces of those present in the cabin, I saw tears come into the eyes of some when the dying man was murmuring child-love talk to the baby.

At the time of the great Leadville rush, many came who never returned. Unknown, many of them sleep in their last resting place—in the gulches, on the mountain sides, and under the shadows of the pine trees and granite peaks. Exposure and not being prepared to guard against the sudden changes of climate caused many to die of pneumonia and fevers. The writer went through a hard attack of typhoid pneumonia in one of the mining camps. After the worst was over and I was conscious again, one of the boys said to me, "Hello, pard, when you were in the fever you thought you had found enough gold mines to have bought out the Astors and Vanderbilts."

The greatest number of deaths for a while seemed to come from what was known as the "sawdust gang." In the wild excitement of a new mining camp boom, people rush in by the hundreds and thousands. Many have only enough money to get there, and are compelled to sleep on the sawdust floor of the saloons. Thus they caught cold, which turning into pneumonia often proved fatal. And the cowboys—how often on the long Texas-Montana drives they have dug a hasty grave and with the lassos lowered their dead pard into it.

The sporting and theatrical element always have a swell funeral in the booming mining camps. The musicians from the dance-halls turn out, play dirges, and with due pomp and ceremony the funeral is conducted. The band returns from the new cemetery usually playing some lively air. The deceased has had a fine funeral and a good sendoff, and now to business. The dance-halls are crowded again, the music goes on, and men and women gamble, dance, and drink, unmindful of what has occurred.