The Making of the Great West, 1512-1883

by Samuel Adams Drake

While Fremont did little that had not been done already, his careful record of distances, fords, camping-places where grass, wood and water could be had, was just what outgoing emigrants needed to know, and so, immediately, they began to go forward with confidence. It was besides a token that Government had taken hold of the matter at last, and would, it was thought, now foster and protect the emigration.

Fremont said it would be necessary to have permanent military posts at Laramie, St. Vrain's and Bent's Fort, to keep the Indians from killing our people, as they passed through their country. Until this should be done the road could not be called safe. But he did the most for emigration in correcting the popular error about the barrenness of the great plains, to which Major Long gave currency, and which everybody to this time had believed. He showed that where the buffalo roamed in such vast herds, and found food, could not be a desert, for the wild grass they lived on would certainly keep the emigrants' cattle, while no man need starve in the midst of such abundance of wild game as constantly roved these plains before their eyes. It was much to have all these things set down in an orderly manner by some friendly hand, and with the seal of Government authority. Fremont did this as it had not been done before.

Fremont's first expedition met with such favor that he was immediately sent on a second (1843), and much more important one. This time he was to begin at the South Pass, and go through the Lower Columbia country. He was well on his way when the War Department suddenly recalled him to Washington, but Mrs. Fremont took the responsibility of suppressing the order until the explorer was too far off for it to reach him.

AMOLE, OR SOAP-PLANT OF THE PLAINS.

At the moment of starting from the Missouri, Fremont met a large party of emigrants who were going to California under the lead of J. B. Childs. This party took with them that modern civilizing engine, a saw-mill, ready to be put up on reaching the Sacramento. As Fremont moved west, trains of wagons were seldom out of sight. The great march had begun in earnest.

Fremont decided to explore the mountains in the neighborhood of St. Vrain's Fort to see if they would afford a practicable passage on a more direct east-and-west line than the old way up the Platte. He therefore struck into them, north of Long's Peak, and by following the Cache-à-la-Poudre[6] River came out on the other side, where his journey of the previous year had ended. From here he passed on into the valley of Bear River, and so on to the Great Salt Lake,[7] which he also explored.

From Salt Lake, Fremont went north to the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Fort Hall, striking the Oregon Trail again by the way. The explorers divided here, part going back to the States and part down the river with Fremont. Fort Boisé[8] they found was only an ordinary dwelling-house. Going on they next came to the mission Dr. Whitman had founded among the Nez Percés, near Walla Walla. It then consisted of but one adobe house, though more were going up around it. Its cornfields and potato-patches, which Dr. Whitman had cleared and planted, were a pleasant sight to men worn down with travel and fasting, but not more so to Fremont than the little colony of emigrants now collected here after their long march of two thousand miles,—men, women and children,—all in robust health, and all regaling themselves with Dr. Whitman's potatoes.

Fort Walla Walla marks an important strategic point in the early movement of emigration to Oregon. Situated only nine miles below the junction of the two great branches of the Columbia, it was thus also planted at the meeting of two great trans-continental routes of travel, one coming from the United States by way of the South Pass, the other from Hudson's Bay by way of Lake Athabasca and the mountain passes near it. For such of the emigrants as chose to go on by water, Walla Walla was the end of their long overland journey. Fremont found a large body of emigrants, under the lead of Mr. Jesse Applegate, building bateaux here to go down the river in.