The "Western Engineer" arrived at St. Louis on the ninth of June, and proceeded again on the twenty-first, after the party had completed certain arrangements for their journey and examined the Indian mounds in the vicinity. The voyage up the Missouri was begun on the twenty-second, being marked by no more important incident than an occasional halt to repair the machinery or clean the boiler. Notwithstanding it drew but nineteen inches of water, the boat grounded twice on sand-bars within four miles of the Mississippi; but on the whole, it worked fairly well and gave comparatively little annoyance. At St. Charles, on June 27, the party was joined by Benjamin O'Fallon, agent for Indian affairs, and John Dougherty, his interpreter. Here Messrs. Say, Jessup, Peale, and Seymour left the boat and made a land excursion, rejoining[pg012] the party at Loutre Island. At Franklin, then the uppermost town of any importance on the Missouri, a halt of several days was made; here Dr. Baldwin, who had been ill since the departure from Pittsburg, was left behind, his death occurring on the thirty-first of August. From Franklin a party under Dr. Say proceeded by land to Fort Osage, where they arrived on July 24, a week in advance of the boat. On the sixth of August Dr. Say left Fort Osage in command of a party bound for the principal village of the Kansa Indians, then situated near the site of the present village of Manhattan, Kansas. Arriving there on the twentieth, they were hospitably entertained for four days; but after their departure were set upon and robbed by a war party of Pawnee braves, and consequently forced to abandon further progress by land and return to the boat.
Meantime the steamer had left Fort Osage on August 10, and eight days later arrived at Cow Island, near Leavenworth, where a portion of the troops of the Yellowstone expedition had wintered. Here another week was spent in a council with the Kansa Indians. On the twenty-ninth of August, Say and his companions arrived at Cow Island, four days after the departure of the boat; both Say and Jessup were ill, and the party had decided to return to the river at that point instead of attempting the longer journey to Council Bluffs, the appointed rendezvous. The others succeeded in overtaking the steamer, the invalids remaining for a time at Cow Island.
Near the quarters of the troops at Council Bluffs (Camp Missouri), Long's party also halted, on September 17, and prepared a winter camp, named "Engineer Cantonment." Here Long left his companions, and, accompanied by Jessup, returned to the East for the winter. His colleagues[pg013] at the cantonment pursued such studies as were possible in the winter season, collecting much valuable information relative to the neighboring tribes of Pawnee, Oto, Iowa, Missouri, and Omaha Indians, and making short excursions which gave them some knowledge of the geology and natural history of the vicinity.
Long returned to the West in the spring of 1820. Leaving St. Louis on April 24, he crossed the intervening wilderness to Council Bluffs by land, arriving at Engineer Cantonment on May 28. With him came Captain J. R. Bell, to replace Major Biddle, also the author of the account herewith reprinted; the latter assumed the duties which had originally been assigned to Baldwin and Jessup. Edwin James was born at Weybridge, Vermont, in 1797, and after graduation at Middlebury College (1816) pursued the study of medicine under a brother, Daniel James, who was a practising physician of Albany, New York. At the same time he prosecuted studies in botany and geology under Dr. John Torrey and Professor Amos Eaton, joining the expedition in 1820 fresh from the tutelage of these men.
Long was also the bearer of fresh instructions. Congress, annoyed at the first season's operations, the results of which had been out of all proportion to the heavy expenditures, had refused further appropriations, and the progress of the Yellowstone expedition was necessarily arrested. Long's party, however, with the exception of Lieutenant Graham, who with the steamboat was assigned to special duty on the Missouri and Mississippi, was to ascend the Platte to its source, and return to the Mississippi by way of the Arkansas and the Red.
The company as now organized, in addition to the scientific[pg014] gentlemen already named, included Dougherty and four other men to serve as interpreters, baggage handlers, and the like, and a detachment of seven soldiers from the troops at Camp Missouri—a total of twenty. Leaving the Missouri on June 6, the expedition visited the Pawnee villages on Loup River, where two Frenchmen were engaged as guides and interpreters. An effort was made to introduce the process of vaccination among the Pawnee, who, in common with other tribes, had suffered heavily from the ravages of smallpox; but the vaccine having been thoroughly drenched by the wreck of one of the keel-boats of the Yellowstone expedition, the attempt was unsuccessful. After two days at the villages, progress was resumed on the thirteenth, and from this time until the mountains were reached, little was encountered to excite interest, save herds of buffalo and the mirage. From near Grand Island the company followed the north bank of the Platte, until they reached the forks, where they crossed to the south bank of the South Fork.
On the thirtieth the Rockies were first sighted—their route along the Platte having borne directly towards the mountain which has since received Long's name, and which was, at first, mistaken for Pike's Peak. The fourth of July, which they had hoped to celebrate in the mountains, found them still at some distance from them; on the fifth they encamped upon the site of the present city of Denver, and the following day directly in front of the chasm through which issues the South Platte. Here two days were passed while James and Peale, with two companions, sought to cross the first range and gain the valley of the Platte beyond; but after surmounting several ridges, each of which appeared to be the summit, only to find[pg015] higher land beyond, the undertaking was abandoned. They did reach, however, an elevated point from which they could distinguish the two forks of the South Platte.
A few days later, members of the expedition performed a more memorable exploit. On the twelfth of July, the camp then being a few miles south of the site of Colorado Springs, James set out with two men, and two days later succeeded in reaching the summit of Pike's Peak, being, so far as history records, the first to accomplish this feat. In honor of the achievement, Major Long christened the mountain James's Peak; but by force of local usage, the present name supplanted this appropriate designation. Lieutenant Swift had meanwhile quite accurately calculated the height of the peak above the basal plains, although an erroneous estimate of the elevation of the latter produced an error of nearly three thousand feet in the determination for the elevation of the summit above sea level. Here, as elsewhere, the observations for longitude and latitude involved a considerable error.
On the sixteenth the party again broke camp, and moved southwest to the Arkansas, which they reached twelve or fifteen miles above the present city of Pueblo. The following day Captain Bell, Dr. James, and two of the men ascended the river to the site of Cañon City, at the entrance of Royal Gorge, where they turned back, again baffled by what seemed to them impassable barriers.
The expedition began the descent of the Arkansas on the nineteenth. After two days' march a camp was made a few miles above the future site of La Junta, Colorado; here a division into two parties was effected, for the purpose of carrying out the instructions of the War Department to explore the courses of both the Arkansas and the[pg016] Red. The division assigned to the exploration of Red River, consisting of James, Peale, and seven men, was commanded by Major Long himself, for this was one of the principal objects of the expedition; the other division, charged with the less important task of descending the Arkansas, the entire course of which had already been examined by Pike and his assistants, was led by Captain Bell.