Then, besides all that, fifty years ago plains life was an odd life. I have journeyed with men for weeks, and even after months of acquaintance have not known their names, except that of Buckeye, Sucker, Missouri, Cass County Bill, Bob, etc. Little bands would travel by themselves for days and weeks and then, under the sense of danger that would be passed along the line, and for defense against depredations of some dangerous tribe of Indians, they would gather into larger bands soon again to fall apart. Some of these would often follow many days behind the head of the column, but always have the benefit of its guidance.
That year grass was late, and they did not get fully under way until the first week in June. Whitman remained behind and did not overtake the advance of the column until it reached the Platte River. He knew the way, he had three times been over it. He was ahead arranging for camping places for those in his immediate company, or in the rear looking after the sick and discouraged. If some failed to know him by name, there were many who did, and all shared in all the knowledge of the country and road which he, better than any other, knew.
In answer to historical critics of modern times we quote Dr. H. H. Spalding, who says, in speaking of the immigration of 1843:
"And through that whole summer Dr. Whitman was everywhere present; the ministering angel to the sick, helping the weary, encouraging the wavering, cheering the tired mothers, setting broken bones and mending wagons. He was in the front, in the center and in the rear. He was in the river hunting out fords through the quicksand; in the desert places looking for water and grass; among the mountains hunting for passes, never before trodden by white men; at noontide and at midnight he was on the alert as if the whole line was his own family, and as if all the flocks and herds were his own. For all this he neither asked nor expected a dollar from any source, and especially did he feel repaid at the end, when, standing at his mission home, hundreds of his fellow pilgrims took him by the hand and thanked him with tears in their eyes for all that he had done."
The head of the column arrived at Fort Hall and there waited for the stragglers to come up. Dr. Whitman knew that here he would meet Captain Johnny Grant, and the old story, "You can't take a wagon into Oregon," would be dinned into the ears of the head of every family. He had heard it over and over again six years before. Fort Hall was thirteen hundred and twenty-three miles from the Missouri River at Kansas City. Here the Doctor expected trouble and found it. Johnny Grant was at Fort Hall to make trouble and discourage immigration. He was working under the pay of the Fur Company and earned his money. The Fur Company did not desire farmers in settlements in Oregon.
Captain Grant at once began to tell them the terrors of the mountain journey and the impossibility of hauling their wagons further. Then he showed them, to prove it, a corral full of fine wagons, with agricultural tools, and thousands of things greatly needed in Oregon, that immigrants had been forced to leave when they took to their pack-saddles. The men were ready, as had been others before, to give up and sacrifice the comforts of their families and rob themselves at the command of the oily advocate.
But here comes Whitman. Johnny Grant knows he now has his master. Dr. Whitman says: "Men, I have guided you thus far in safety. Believe nothing you hear about not being able to get your wagons through; every one of you stick to your wagons and your goods. They will be invaluable to you when you reach the end of your journey. I took a wagon through to Oregon six years ago." (Again we see the historic wagon.) The men believed him. They refused to obey Captain Grant's touching appeal and almost a command to leave their wagons behind. Never did an order, than the one Whitman made, add more to the comfort and actual value of a band of travelers.
One of a former company tells of a packing experience, after submitting to Captain Grant's orders. He says: "There were lively times around old Fort Hall when the patient old oxen and mules were taken from the wagons to be left behind and the loads of bedding, pots and pans were tied on to their backs. They were unused to such methods. There would first be a shying, then a fright and a stampede, and bellowing oxen and braying mules and the air would be full of flying kettles and camp fixtures, while women and children crying and the men swearing, made up a picture to live in the memory."
No one better than Whitman knew the toil and danger attending the last six hundred miles of the journey to Oregon. Col. George B. Curry, in an address before the Pioneer Society of Oregon in 1887, gives a graphic sketch, wonderfully realistic, of the immigrant train in 1853. He says: "From the South Pass the nature of our journeying changed, and assumed the character of a retreat, a disastrous, ruinous retreat. Oxen and horses began to perish in large numbers; often falling dead in their yokes in the road. The heat-dried wagon, striking on the rocks or banks would fall to pieces. As the beasts of burden grew weaker, and the wagon more rickety, teams began to be doubled and wagons abandoned. The approaching storms of autumn, which, on the high mountains at the last end of our journey, meant impassable snow, admitted of no delay. Whatever of strength remained of the jaded cattle must be forced out. Every thing of weight not absolutely necessary must be abandoned.
"There was no time to pause and recruit the hungry stock, nor dare we allow them much freedom to hunt the withered herbage, for a marauding enemy hung upon the rear, hovering on either flank, and skulked in ambuscade in the front, the horizon was a panorama of mountains, the grandest and most desolate on the continent. The road was strewn with dead cattle, abandoned wagons, discarded cooking utensils, ox-yokes, harness, chairs, mess chests, log chains, books, heirlooms, and family keepsakes. The inexorable surroundings of the struggling mass permitted no hesitation or sentiment.