The song was intended to show that this Joe Bowers came from our county, and, perhaps, because so many of the emigrants were singing it, all of us who went into California in the year 1851 were, as I have said, called "Pikers."
However the name came about, I was a Piker, and before we arrived in this wondrously beautiful country, I wished again and again that I had been almost any other than an emigrant, for the way was long, and oh! so wearisome.
I must always think of Missouri as being one of the best of all the states in the Union, because it was there I was born and there I went to school until father caught the California fever, which resulted in our setting out on a journey which, for a time, seemed endless.
My father had no idea of going so far simply to dig for gold. He had seen many who went across the country in 1849 believing they would come back rich as kings, yet who returned home poorer in pocket than when they left; therefore he came to understand that only a few of all that vast army of miners who hastened into California after the discovery at Sutter's Mill, got enough of the precious metal to pay for the food they ate.
Father thought he could buy better land in California than was to be found in Pike County, for to have heard the stories told by some of the people who had come back disappointed from the land of gold, you might have believed that one had only to put a few seeds at random in the ground in order to gather marvelous crops.
THE REASONS FOR MOVING
Nor was my father the only man who put faith in at least some of the fanciful tales told concerning the land of California which had so lately been given up to the United States by the Spaniards. Our neighbors for miles around were in a state of unrest and excitement, until it was decided that nearly all would undertake the long journey, and I could not prevent myself from wondering if Pike County would not feel lonely to have the people abandon it, for it surely seemed as if every man, woman, and child was making haste to leave Missouri in search of the wondrous farming lands.
Mother looked woefully solemn when, on a certain evening, father came home and told us that he had sold the plantation for about half as much as it had cost him, and was going to join the next company that set out from Pike County.
