The pioneer West

by Unknown

At this camp they had to make moccasins for themselves and also for the oxen, whose feet had become so lacerated and tender from tramping over knife-edged stones, it was feared that they might give out altogether. These moccasins they made from the hide of the ox they had just slaughtered.

It was four days’ travel to the next water hole, and all the water they could have during that time was what they could carry in their canteens. This they did not dare use during the day, but must save for their soup; none but the children could have any water, and they only at long intervals, and after they had cried hard for it.

The third night they had to make their soup with salt water which they found in a water hole; the next day they had no water at all for themselves or the oxen, only a little for the children, till they arrived at water holes at the base of a snow mountain. The oxen had to subsist on greasewood, a shrub resembling a currant bush.

They were nine days from camp, their beans, flour and wheat all used up. They must now subsist on the beef obtained by killing their oxen. An ox yielded very little meat, and it was of the very poorest quality, giving very little nutrition; always they had to kill the poorest-conditioned one, so as to make sure the others could travel on, for they were now reduced to skin and bone.

The moccasins of the entire party were again completely worn out, so that, as one of the women expressed it, their feet ached like the tooth-ache; not only were their feet blistered and sore, but their dresses were worn off nearly to their knees by being draggled through the chaparral of the desert. But they could not stop long enough to kill an ox or make moccasins, but must plod on that the lives of the whole party might be saved. Their camp would be at a spring, and they must reach it that day, but they were caught by darkness four hours short of it, and did not reach it till four hours after daylight the next day; and to make matters worse, a rain-storm, the second they had encountered since leaving Wisconsin, came up that turned to snow, and at sunrise there were two inches of snow on the ground. Their condition was truly miserable. They rested long enough at the next spring to kill an ox and make moccasins. The amount of meat procured from the ox when dried was easily carried in the mule’s pack, it was so very small.

The next morning, after their meal of soup made from the meat of the ox, they felt somewhat refreshed, and in better spirits. It was a two days’ journey to the next water hole. They were now in what later came to be called the Mojave Desert, a waterless, barren plain, on which nothing grew with which they could make a fire, nothing to which they could even tie their animals, and when they camped that night, they simply tied them together. They could not make a fire; they had to content themselves with a little dried meat, and a little sip of water, for they were still another day from water, that they reached late the following afternoon, and also found a little grass for the cattle.

The next day, a few hours after starting, they lost the trail; the ground was of such a nature it could not retain marks of a trail. It was plenteously covered with the bones of animals, however, showing that many had passed that way, all of which so depressed the women that they had to go into camp until the next morning. That night they came to the water hole they had planned to reach the night before; all that the cattle could have for food was a few sage-bushes at which they nibbled. The next day they were in a hilly country, and the day following they came to the little babbling brook that had so delighted Manley and Rodgers the first time they saw it.

Here Manley writes in his journal, “New life seemed to come to the dear women. ‘O what a beautiful stream!’ they cried, and they dip in a tin cup and drink, and drink again, then watch the rollicking brook as if it was the most entertaining thing in the whole wide earth.”

It was now the seventh day of March, 1850, twenty-two days since they left their wagons, and four months since they entered Death Valley, and about a year since they left Wisconsin. It had been for them a year of wandering, struggle and terrible hardship. They took a long rest, the cattle eating their fill, and then slowly traveled to the home of the settler where Manley and Rodgers had obtained their supplies. The woman recognized them, and when the men came home they were handsomely treated.

None of our travelers had a cent of money. Mr. Arcane sold his two steers, all the property he had in the world, to the Mexicans, and with the money obtained started for San Pedro, the post of Los Angeles; there he hoped to obtain a passage on a sailing vessel to San Francisco. The Bennetts, Manley and Rodgers leisurely went on to Los Angeles, some thirty miles away, and from there found their way to the mines.