The usual crowd, which every May for several years had brought to the Missouri River crossings around Fort Leavenworth, was reënforced in 1849 and swollen almost beyond recognition. A rifle regiment of regulars was there, bound for Forts Laramie and Hall to erect new frontier posts. Lieutenant Stansbury was there, gathering his surveying party which was to prospect for a railway route to Salt Lake. By thousands and tens of thousands others came, tempted by the call of gold. This was the cheap and popular route. Every western farmer was ready to start, with his own wagons and his own stock. The townsman could easily buy the simple equipment of the plains. The poor could work their way, driving cattle for the better-off. Through inexperience and congestion the journey was likely to be hard, but any one might undertake it. Niles reported in June that up to May 18, 2850 wagons had crossed the river at St. Joseph, and 1500 more at the other ferries.
Familiarity had done much to divest the overland journey of its terrors. We hear in this, and even in earlier years, of a sort of plains travel de luxe, of wagons "fitted up so as to be secure from the weather and ... the women knitting and sewing, for all the world as if in their ordinary farm-houses." Stansbury, hurrying out in June and overtaking the trains, was impressed with the picturesque character of the emigrants and their equipment. "We have been in company with multitudes of emigrants the whole day," he wrote on June 12. "The road has been lined to a long extent with their wagons, whose white covers, glittering in the sunlight, resembled, at a distance, ships upon the ocean.... We passed also an old Dutchman, with an immense wagon, drawn by six yoke of cattle, and loaded with household furniture. Behind followed a covered cart containing the wife, driving herself, and a host of babies—the whole bound to the land of promise, of the distance to which, however, they seemed to have not the most remote idea. To the tail of the cart was attached a large chicken-coop, full of fowls; two milch-cows followed, and next came an old mare, upon the back of which was perched a little, brown-faced, barefooted girl, not more than seven years old, while a small sucking colt brought up the rear." Travellers eastward bound, meeting the procession, reported the hundreds and thousands whom they met.
The organization of the trains was not unlike that of the Oregonians and the Mormons, though generally less formal than either of these. The wagons were commonly grouped in companies for protection, little needed, since the Indians were at peace during most of 1849. At nightfall the long columns came to rest and worked their wagons into the corral which was the typical plains encampment. To form this the wagons were ranged in a large circle, each with its tongue overlapping the vehicle ahead, and each fastened to the next with the brake or yoke chains. An opening at one end allowed for driving in the stock, which could here be protected from stampede or Indian theft. In emergency the circle of wagons formed a fortress strong enough to turn aside ordinary Indian attacks. When the companies had been on the road for a few weeks the forming of the corral became an easy military manœuvre. The itinerant circus is to-day the thing most like the fleet of prairie schooners.
The emigration of the forty-niners was attended by worse sufferings than the trail had yet known. Cholera broke out among the trains at the start. It stayed by them, lining the road with nearly five thousand graves, until they reached the hills beyond Fort Laramie. The price of inexperience, too, had to be paid. Wagons broke down and stock died. The wreckage along the trail bore witness to this. On July 27, Stansbury observed: "To-day we find additional and melancholy evidence of the difficulties encountered by those who are ahead of us. Before halting at noon, we passed eleven wagons that had been broken up, the spokes of the wheels taken to make pack-saddles, and the rest burned or otherwise destroyed. The road has been literally strewn with articles that have been thrown away. Bar-iron and steel, large blacksmiths' anvils and bellows, crowbars, drills, augers, gold-washers, chisels, axes, lead, trunks, spades, ploughs, large grindstones, baking-ovens, cooking-stoves without number, kegs, barrels, harness, clothing, bacon, and beans, were found along the road in pretty much the order in which they have been here enumerated. The carcasses of eight oxen, lying in one heap by the roadside, this morning, explained a part of the trouble." In twenty-four miles he passed seventeen abandoned wagons and twenty-seven dead oxen.
Beyond Fort Hall, with the journey half done, came the worst perils. In the dust and heat of the Humboldt Valley, stock literally faded away, so that thousands had to turn back to refuge at Salt Lake, or were forced on foot to struggle with thirst and starvation.
The number of the overland emigrants can never be told with accuracy. Perhaps the truest estimate is that of the great California historian who counts it that, in 1849, 42,000 crossed the continent and reached the gold fields.
It was a mixed multitude that found itself in California after July, 1849, when the overland folk began to arrive. All countries and all stations in society had contributed to fill the ranks of the 100,000 or more whites who were there in the end of the year. The farmer, the amateur prospector, and the professional gambler mingled in the crowd. Loose women plied their trade without rebuke. Those who had come by sea contained an over-share of the undesirable element that proposed to live upon the recklessness and vices of the miners. The overland emigrants were largely of farmer stock; whether they had possessed frontier experience or not before the start, the 3000-mile journey toughened and seasoned all who reached California. Nearly all possessed the essential virtues of strength, boldness, and initiative.
The experience of Oregon might point to the future of California when its strenuous population arrived upon the unprepared community. The Mexican government had been ejected by war. A military government erected by the United States still held its temporary sway, but felt out of place as the controlling power over a civilian American population. The new inhabitants were much in need of law, and had the American dislike for military authority. Immediately Congress was petitioned to form a territorial government for the new El Dorado. But Congress was preoccupied with the relations of slavery and freedom in the Southwest during its session of 1848–1849. It adjourned with nothing done for California. The mining population was irritated but not deeply troubled by this neglect. It had already organized its miners' courts and begun to execute summary justice in emergencies. It was quite able and willing to act upon the suggestion of its administrative officers and erect its state government without the consent of Congress. The military governor called the popular convention; the constitution framed during September, 1849, was ratified by popular vote on November 13; a few days later Governor Riley surrendered his authority into the hands of the elected governor, Burnett, and the officials of the new state. All this was done spontaneously and easily. There was no sanction in law for California until Congress admitted it in September, 1850, receiving as one of its first senators, John C. Frémont.
The year 1850 saw the great compromise upon slavery in the Southwest, a compromise made necessary by the appearance on the Pacific of a new America. The "call of the West and the lust for gold" had done their work in creating a new centre of life beyond the quondam desert.
The census of 1850 revealed something of the nature of this population. Probably 125,000 whites, though it was difficult to count them and impossible to secure absolute accuracy, were found in Oregon and California. Nine-tenths of these were in the latter colony. More than 11,000 were found in the settlements around Great Salt Lake. Not many more than 3000 Americans were scattered among the Mexican population along the Rio Grande. The great trails had seen most of these home-seekers marching westward over the desert and across the Indian frontier which in the blindness of statecraft had been completed for all time in 1840.