Oregon History Online 2

Meanwhile Curry had acted as governor ex-officio in succession to Davis, and November 1, 1854, he was appointed governor by Pres. Franklin Pierce (1804-1869). This ought logically to have satisfied the aspirations of the home rule party, but as a matter of fact the early advocates of statehood as a measure of expediency had so far become converted to the general principle that, notwithstanding the appointment of an Oregon man, the constitution movement continued. Its adoption by the Democrats as a party measure gave it the benefit of party organization when the "Democratic dogma of statehood" became the predominant issue in the territory, and it also received the support of one of the whip leaders, David Logan. Another bill submitting the question to the people, therefore, was passed at the legislative session of 1856, and a special election was held in April 1856, at which the majority against a constitution was reduced to 249. Lane, in Congress, this year introduced a bill for admission to statehood by congressional action. His bill failed to pass for the ostensible reason that the members of Whig apprehensions in the eastern states lest the new state, which had persistently send a Democrat to Congress, should array itself on the side of slavery in both House and Senate. Soon after this, however, there was a sweeping change of sentiment in the territory, which found expression in the declaration of the Whig leaders in Oregon that Pres. James Buchanan (1791-1868) was preparing a policy of forcing slavery upon free territories by federal action, and that "if we are to have the institution of slavery fastened upon us here, we desire the people resident in Oregon to do it, and not the will and power of a few politicians in Washington City." (Oregonian, November 1, 1856) The question of statehood was submitted again in the 1857 election, and this time it was carried by a vote of 7,617 to 1,679, a decisive, overwhelming majority of 5,938.
There was more than the usual surface opposition to Lane for delegate to Congress in the election of 1857, too, which was the direct result of his known pro-slavery inclinations. A peculiar combination of circumstances by this time prevailed which made it seem not only possible but even highly probable that slavery might be imposed upon the territory. The party division in Oregon was preponderantly in favor of the Democrats and while it was true that many local Democrats were opposed to slavery, it could not be denied that nationally the real Democrat issue above all over was slavery.
It is interesting now after the lapse of so many years and after the burning questions concerning slave holding are no longer living issues to note that there were courageous men among the Democrats who did not disguise their opposition to the introduction of slavery into Oregon. As early as 1853, Judge George H. Williams, a Democrat appointed to hold office under a Democrat administration, dared to decide according to his conscience, although against what was then the prevailing popular opinion. In an address made by him many years afterward to the Oregon pioneers he told the story in these words:

Among the first cases I was called upon to decide when I first came to Oregon in 1853 was an application by a colored family in Polk County to be liberated upon habeas corpus from their Missouri owner, who had brought and held them here as slaves. They were held upon the claim that the Constitution of the US protected slave property in the territories; but it was my judgment that the law made by the pioneers upon the subject (in 1844) was not inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution and was the law of the land, and the petitioners were set free; and so far as I know this was the last attempt at slave holding in Oregon. When the state government was formed, strenuous efforts were put forth to make Oregon a slave state; but inspired by the example and sentiments of the early pioneers we decided to go into the union as a free state.
The undercurrents of opinion, the conflicting desires and emotions of the people, and in particular the sound reasons which the opponents of slavery had for apprehension as to the outcome, have been set forth by a keen observer of and participant in the events of that stirring time, T. W. Davenport, who says:

Some pro-slavery Democrats, confident of the approval and patronage of the Washington administration, would not be silenced, and were advocates, by speech and press, of their opinions. And they were far more numerous than those Democrats of free-state proclivities who dared speak out. And of the latter some would say, "I shall vote against slavery, but if it carries I shall get me a nigger." Add to all these the fact of the great donations of land by the general government, section and half-section claims occupying the valleys of the richest portion of the territory, and the scarcity and high price of labor, and we may not wonder at their anxiety.

The 1850s in Oregon was a decade of growth and also of refinement of what was at hand. There was achievement in all areas—the economy, transportation, education, government, the amenities of everyday life. But overlaying all of this, there was a stain, and it was the stain of blood. From 1851-1853 and again from 1855-1856, Indian wars plagued both Southern and Northeastern Oregon.
The problem was land. With the Donation Land Act of 1850, Congress offered "free land" to the immigrants before arranging for its purchase from the Indians—treaty after treaty negotiated for such a purpose and never ratified. Some of the settlers sympathized with the Indians in their plight, but many urged their extermination. "Indeed, this seems to be the only alternative left," editorialized the Oregonian in the fall of 1853. Certain individuals took it upon themselves to do just that, but others, such as Joseph Lane and Joel Palmer, sought to gain fair treatment for the Indians.

The ideas that dominated the thinking, if it may be termed that, of Americans who flooded the West during the 19th Century are not beyond explanation. To achieve an understanding of them one need only remember that by far the larger number of persons, both male and female, who crossed the Missouri as emigrants were not blessed with great intellects. They were people of the backwoods, of the city slums, unlettered common laborers and farmers and hunters and trappers, a vast proportion of them the dregs of American society. They were, with some notable exceptions, uncouth, ill-mannered, crude, ignorant and greedy. They were religious and racial bigots. All of them were looking for something for nothing.

The Doukhobor, a Russian religious sect, practiced "Plow-Hitching" with
women. They settled in Peoria and Eugene in the early 1900s.
Photo Courtesy of Julie Hendricks

A great fallacy still harbored by a regrettably large number of Americans and still promoted by hypocritical patriots and politicians is that every man and women who chose to enter Indian Country beyond the Missouri was a hero or heroine. Pœans still ring throughout the land for the brave souls who set out for the unknown, facing the great perils of the wilderness with a burning dream of building a greater America.
They didn't do any such thing. They thought lest of all, and most likely not at all, of their country's future. The only dreams they had—except nightmares caused by fear—were of free land and free gold, of becoming rich and secure, with a minimum of exertion and little expense.
It could hardly be expected that people afflicted with such deficiencies, of such low levels and backgrounds, could be expected to display intelligence in their relations with Indians. Obviously they could not make use of qualities by animalistic and materialistic instincts, and the purity of these characteristics was seldom adulterated even by small portions of compassion, consideration or justice. As they were unable to understand Indians, they treated them with disdain, hatred and contempt, all thoroughly normal reactions.
The colorful euphemisms that newspapers, books and periodicals showered on the squatters who crossed the Western Plains enhanced the public's overall picture of the Golden West, but they concealed the ingredients of depravity and viciousness that existed. Most of the frontiersmen, pioneers and conquerors of the wild western domain, were, and still are, highly lauded and eulogized for courage that did not exist in them, and praised for moral principles they did not possess.

God-fearing was a term generously applied to them. True, they attended church and listened to sermons and sang hymns on Sunday, but it was also true that they conveniently forgot all biblical admonitions as soon as they left church services. They turned their religion on and off with an effective mental spigot. They advocated and practiced a method of putting the Indian in touch with heaven that was more certain and less complicated than that commanded by the doctrines of churchianity. It was, "Shoot them where you find them."

Notwithstanding the second treaty made by Gen. Joseph Lane, the treaty of 1853, the Rogue Rivers were all again on the war path killing and robbing the settlers in 1855 and 1856. The widely scattered settlements of the mountainous region of Southern Oregon could not be successfully defended by any reasonable force of white men, because they could not live and attack and travel through the mountains as the Indian could. Tyee John359 was the leader and hero of this last Indian War, and an Indian better qualified for guerrilla warfare could not have been found. It is impossible to record in this work all the battles, routes, murders and toilsome marches of a dozen separated commands of volunteers and regulars endeavoring to keep the Indians so continually on the move from one hiding place to another that they would be exhausted, surrender and go on the then provided Indian Reservation. By this strenuous effort nearly all the old men, women and children of the Indian tribes were gathered up, but the able bodied warriors still roved about the country murdering and robbing whenever there was an opportunity.

The Indians had made the junction of the Illinois and Rogue river streams their headquarters; for while this location was difficult to access by regular US soldiers and their equipment, it was an ideal point for the Indians to convene at and run away from if attacked, furnishing three water-level valleys in three different directions as line of access or escape. To this point Lt. Col. Buchanan in command of the US regulars, directed his efforts in hopes of convening there all the warring chiefs for the purpose of inducing them to go on the Indian Reservations in Benton and Yamhill counties. Word was sent out in all directions inviting the outstanding warriors to meet Buchanan at Big Meadows near the mouth of the Illinois River. Tyee John accepted the invitation and came May 21, 1856, with all his men, and Tyee George, Tyee Limpy and other minor chiefs. Tyee John was invited into the soldiers' camp for a talk, and assured of protection. He came and had a long talk with Buchanan, and which was finally ended by Tyee John's speech to him, saying:

You are a great chief; so am I. This is my country. I was in it when those large trees were very small, not higher than my head. My heart is sick with fighting; but I want to live in my country. If the white people are willing I will go back to Deer Creek and live among them as I used to do. They can visit my camp, and I will visit theirs; but I will not lay down my arms and go with you to the Reserve. I will fight! Goodbye.

Then he returned unrestrained to his own camp as had been agreed.
After much argument and promises of many presents all the chiefs but Tyee John came in four days after and gave up their arms and were escorted by a part of the soldiers to Fort Lane on their way to the Reservation. Cpt. A. J. Smith had given notice that in three or four days he would be back at the common rendezvous with his men to receive the remainder of the warriors; and to hasten their decision had told them that if he found any of them roaming around the country with fire arms he would hang them. But when he got back to camp no Indians appeared, but instead thereof, two peaceably disposed Indian women came in and informed Smith that he might expect an attack from Tyee John on the next day. Smith immediately hurried off a courier to Col. Buchanan asking for reinforcements to meet this sudden change in Tyee John's disposition, and then immediately moved his camp to higher ground, but further away from water, and had to leave his cavalry horses in the meadows below him. The men worked all night, getting no sleep, digging rifle pits with their tin cups, having not a single spade in camp, and planting their Howitzer so It would command one approach to their position while the men lying flat in their shallow pits could protect the other approach with their carbines.

Tyee John's first move was to send forward 40 armed warriors for a talk with Cpt. Smith, and as they advanced to the east approach they called on Smith to come out and talk. The captain was too well aware of Indian tactics to trust himself in their possession, and so ordered them to retire and deposit their arms at the edge of the timber. Thus finding Smith prepared to attack, and no chance to capture him by strategy, the Warriors returned to their camp, and within an hour, on May 27, 1856, was commenced the last pitched battle of the Rogue River Indian War. The Indians simultaneously attacked both sides of Smith's camp, firing their guns and rushing up the defending slopes with hideous yells. They were met at short range with the deadly fire of the carbines on both sides and compelled to fall back to the timber. Not being able to get at the soldiers by these approaches, the Indians made desperate attempts to scale the unprotected sides with perpendicular banks, and the regulars were compelled to abandon their rifle pits and hurl back the desperate foe with shots at short range, and even some Indians with clubbed muskets. The Indians exhibited the most reckless daring and bravery in repeated attacks throughout the day in attempts to get into Smith's camp, but all to no purpose but the loss of life to the attacking party. Thus the long day of May 27, was spent; followed by hard work all the succeeding night digging more rifle pits and erecting breastworks; without food, water or sleep. On the 28th the Indians renewed the attack; and to the non-indians was added not only the labor and dangers of defense, but also the fatigue from loss sleep and the torture of thirst. The Indians understood the frightful condition of the white men, and from their covert in the edge of the timber, tauntingly called out "Mika hyas ticka chuck" (You very much want water?); "Halo chuck Boston" (No water for white man.) And to this taunt they added another (referring to Smith's threat to hang all Indians He found roaming over the country with arms in their hands) "That they had ropes to hang every trooper, the soldiers not being worth the powder and ball to shoot them;" and occasionally a rope would be hung out on a bush and Smith was told to come out and hang himself. All sorts of insulting epithets in tolerable English were hurled at the soldiers from the nearest fringe of timber. This terrible strain continued until 4pm the second day of the battle, when one third of Smith's command was murdered and wounded. About sundown the Indians held a council, and relying on the exhausted condition of their non-indian foe, planned to charge Smith's camp with the whole force. "It was an hour never to be forgotten"—says the letter to the soldiers—"a silent and awful hour, in the expectation of speedy and cruel death." Suddenly an infernal chorus of yells burst forth from Tyee John's camp, and the whole army joining in one blood-curdling roar of demoniac fury; they rushed upon Smith's poor camp from all sides. The life of every non-indian hung in the balance; and the yelling, and savage thirst for non-indian blood had prevented the Indian chief from discovering that at that same instant Cpt. C. C. Auger, responding to Smith's call for aid, had silently crept through the surrounding timber, and as the Indians charged down upon the beleaguered non-indians, Augur's men rushed upon the rear of the Indian attack firing a short range and then charging with the bayonets, and the battle was over in 15 minutes, the Indians wildly fleeing in all directions, abandoning their camp entirely. Thus ended May 28, 1856, the last battle of Tyee John and the Rogue Rivers.
Tyee John was a very unusual Indian. He is described as a bolder, braver and stronger man mentally than any chief west of the Cascade Mountains. When dressed in a non-indian costume he might have been easily taken for a hard working, sun burnt farmer of the western states. With slight resistance after his last battle he, with all his warriors, came in and surrendered to Cpt. Smith, and Gen. Palmer, superintendent of Indian affairs, on June 1, 1856, thus ending the Rogue River Indian wars for all time. The final result was that about 2,700 Indians old and young were removed from the Southern Oregon country to the Siletz and Grand Ronde Reservation, and showing that before the war commenced there must have been an Indian population of fully 5,000 in the region. Many minor events, bloody reprisals, and isolated murders from both sides have been recorded, but which have not been referred to, but which are well worth preserving. These have been collated by Dr. William L. Colvig, and given to present day readers in an address by him to the reunion of Indian war veterans at Medford on July 26, 1902; and all of this Indian war history compiled in the above address, and which has not been already recorded within, will now be given and credited to Colvig's careful work.
The first recorded attack between Indian and non-indians in any portion of Southern Oregon occurred in 1828 when Jedediah Strong Smith and seven other trappers were attacked by the Indians on the Umpqua, and 15 non-indians were slain, only Smith and three of his companions escaping. The next attack of which we have any account was in June 1836, at a point just below the Rock Point Bridge, where the barn on the Colvig estate stands. In this attack there was Dan Miller, Edward Barnes, Dr. William J. Bailey, George Gay, Saunders, Woodworth, Irish Tom, and J. Turner and squaw. Two trappers were murdered, and nearly all wounded. Within my recollection, Bailey visited the scene of the attack, and pointed out to my father its location. In September 1837, at the mouth of Foots Creek, in Jackson County, a party of men who had been sent to California by the Methodist mission to procure cattle, while on their return were attacked by the Rogue Rivers and had a short, severe fight, in which several of the non-indians were badly wounded and some 12 or 14 of the Indians murdered. In May 1845, Cpt. John Freémont (1813-1890) had a fight with the Indians in the Klamath country; it may have been a little over the line in California. Four of Fremont's men were murdered and quite a large number of the Indians. Kit Carson was a prominent figure in this battle.
A few bold adventurers had located in Rogue River Valley as early as December 1851. During the spring, summer and autumn of that year there was a considerable amount of travel by parties from Northern Oregon going to and returning from the great mining excitement of California. Fights between these travelers and the Indians were of frequent occurrence. On May 15, 1851, a pack train was attacked at a point on Bear Creek, where the town of Phoenix is now situated, and a man by the name of Dilley was murdered.
At the massacre of emigrants at Bloody Point, Klamath County, in 1852, 36 men, women and children were murdered. Cpt. Benjamin Wright, and 27 men from Yreka and Col. John E. Ross and some Oregonians went out to punish the Modoc. Old Schonchin, who was afterwards hung at Fort Klamath in 1873, at the close of the Modoc War, was the leader. Wright gave them no quarter. He and his men, infuriated at the sight of the mangled bodies of the emigrants, murdered men, women and children without discrimination.
I cannot give you the names of all who were murdered in Rogue River Valley during the years 1851 and 1852, and 1853. I mention some that were murdered in 1853. In August of that year Edward Edwards was murdered near Medford; Thomas Wills and Rhodes Nolan, in the edge of the town of Jacksonville; Patrick Dunn and Carter, both wounded in a attack on Neil Creek above Ashland. In an attack with the Indians on Bear Creek, in August 1853, Hugh Smith was murdered, and Howell Morris, Hodgins, Wittemore, and Gibbs, wounded, the last named three dying from their wounds soon after. These murders, and many more that could be mentioned, brought on the Indian War of 1853. Southern Oregon raised six companies of volunteers, who served under the following named captains, viz. R. L. Williams, John K. Lamerick, Cpt. John F. Fuller, Elias A. Owens, and W. W. Fowler. Cpt. Bradford R. Alden, of the 4th US infantry, with 20 regulars, came over from Fort Jones, California, and with him a large number of volunteers under Cpt. James P. Goodall and Cpt. Jacob F. Rhodes, two Indian fighters of experience. Cpt. Alden was given the command of all the forces. The battle of the war was fought August 12, 1853, and was an exciting little attack between about 20 volunteers under Lt. Burrell W. Griffin, of Cpt. Miller's company, and a band of Indians under Tyee John. The volunteers were ambushed at a point near the mouth of Williams Creek, on the Applegate. The non-indians were defeated with a loss of two murdered, and Lt. Griffin severely wounded. There were five Indians murdered and wounded in the battle. On August 10, 1853, John R. Harding and William R. Rose, of Cpt. Lamerick's company, were murdered near Willow Springs.
The War of 1855-1856 was preceded by a great many murders and depredations by the Indians in different parts of Southern Oregon.

On account of these various depredations, Maj. J. A. Lupton raised a temporary force of volunteers, composed of miners and others, from the vicinity of Jacksonville, about 35 in number, and proceeded to a point on the north side of the Rogue, opposite the mouth of Little Butte Creek. There he attacked a camp of Indians at a time when they were not expecting trouble. It is said that about 30 men, women and children were massacred by Lupton's men. The major himself received a mortal wound in the attack. This attack has been much criticized by the people of Southern Oregon, a great many of them believing that it was unjustifiable and cowardly. Two days after this affair a series of massacres took place in the sparsely settled county in and about where Grants Pass is now situated. On October 9, 1855, the Indians, having divided up into small parties, simultaneously attacked the homes of the defenseless families located ink that vicinity. I will name a few of those tragic events. On the farm owned by James Tuffs, a man by the name of Jones was murdered, and his wife, after receiving a mortal wound, made her escape. She was found by the volunteers on the next day and died a few days afterwards. A woman by the name of Wagner was murdered by the Indians on the same day. Her spouse was away from home at the time, but returned on the following day to find his wife murdered and his home a pile of ashes. The Harris family, consisting of Harris and wife and two children, Mary Harris, aged 12, and David Harris, aged ten, and T. A. Reed, who lived with the family were attacked. Harris was shot down standing near his door, and at a moment when he little suspected treachery from the Indians with whom he was talking. His wife and daughter pulled his body within the door, and seizing a double-barreled shotgun and an old fashioned Kentucky rifle, commenced firing through the cracks of the log cabin. They kept this up till late in the night, and by heroic bravery kept the Indians from either gaining an entrance into the house or succeeding in their attempts to fire it. Just back of the cabin was a dense thicket of brush and during a lull in the attack the two brave women escaped through the back door land fled through the woods. They were found the next day by the volunteers from Jacksonville, our late friend, Henry Klippel being one of the number. Ms. Harris lived to a good old age in this country. Mary, who was wounded in the attack, afterwards became the wife of G. M. Love, and was the mother of George Love of Jacksonville, and Ms. John A. Hanley of Medford. David Harris, the boy, was not in the house when the attack was made, but at work on the place. His fate was never ascertained, as his body was never found. The Indians stated, after peace was made, that they killed him at the time they attacked the Harris house. Reed, the young man spoken of, was killed out near the house.

On October 31, 1855, the battle of Hungry Hill was fought near the present railway station of Leland. Cpt. A. J. Smith of the US army was at the battle, and a large number of citizen soldiers. The result of the battle was very indecisive. There were 31 whites murdered and wounded, nine of them murdered outright. It is not known how many of the Indians were murdered, but after the treaty was made they confessed to 15. The Indians were in heavy timber and were scarcely seen during the two days' battle.
In April, 1856, after peace had been concluded between non-indians and Indians, the Leford Massacre took place in Rancheria Prairie, near Mount McLoughlin, in this county, in which five non-indians were murdered. This event was the last of the "irrepressible conflict." Soon afterwards the Indians were removed to the Siletz Reservation, where their descendants now live and enjoy the favors of the government which their fathers so strongly resisted.
The war in Rogue River Valley had not virtually ended. "Old Sam's" band, with an escort of 100 US troops, was taken to the Coast Reservation at Siletz. Tyee John and Tyee Limpy, with a large number of the most active warriors, who had followed their fortunes during all these struggles still held out and continued their depredations in the Lower Rogue River Country and in connection with the Indians of Curry County.
Gen. John Ellis Wool (1784-1869), commander of the Department of the Pacific, in November 1855, had stopped at Crescent City while on his way to the Yakima country. He received full information while here of the military operations in Southern Oregon. Skipping many details, it is sufficient to state that he ordered Cpt. Smith, to move down the river from Fort Lane and form a junction with the US troops under Cpt. Jones and Cpt. E. O. C. Ord (afterwards a major general in the US army) who were prosecuting an active campaign in the region from Chetco, Pistol River, and the Illinois Valley. Cpt. Smith left Fort Lane with 80 men—50 dragoons and 30 infantry. I can only take the time to mention a few of the attacks in the region during the spring of 1856. On March 8th, Cpt. John H. Abbott had a skirmish with the Chetco at Pistol River. He lost several men. The Indians had his small force completely surrounded when captains Ord and Jones with 112 regular troops came to his relief. They charged and drove the Indians away with heavy loss. On March 20, 1855, Lt. Col. Buchanan, assisted by captains Jones and Ord, attacked an Indian village ten miles above the mouth of Rouge River. The Indians were driven away, leaving several dead and only one non-indian wounded in the attack. A few days later Cpt. Augur's company (US troops) attacked Tyee John and Tyee Limpy's band at the mouth of the Illinois River. The Indians fought desperately, leaving five dead on the battlefield. On March 27, 1855, the regulars met the Indians on Lower Rogue River. After a brisk attack at close quarters the Indians fled, leaving ten dead and two of the soldiers severely wounded. On April 1, 1855, Cpt. Creighton, with a company of citizens, attacked an Indian village near the mouth of the Coquille River, killing nine men, wounding 11 and taking 40 squaws and children prisoners. About this time some volunteers attacked a party of Indians who were moving in canoes at the mouth of the Rogue River. They murdered 11 men and one squaw. Only one warrior and two squaws of the party escaped. On April 29, 1855, a party of 60 regulars escorting a pack train were attacked near Chetco. In this fight three soldiers were murdered and wounded. The Indians lost six murdered and several wounded.

On May 31, Gov. Curry ordered the volunteer forces to disband—nearly all the Indians had surrendered. About 1,100 of the various tribes that had carried on the war were gathered in camp at Port Orford. About July 1, 1856, Tyee John and 35 tough looking warriors, the last to surrender, "threw down the hatchet."
A large number of non-indians rendered valuable and distinguished services in this long, bitter and sanguinary combat with the redmen. Gen. Lane; majors Latshaw; J. A. Lupton; James Bruce; colonels J. E. Ross; John Kelsay; W. W. Chapman; captains A. J. Smith; J. M. Kirkpatrick; William H. Packard; B. Wright; J. H. Lamerick; John F. Miller; E. A. Owens; W. W. Fowler; B. R. Alden; Creighton; Lt. B. W. Griffin; Dr. W. L. Colvig; and Mary Harris; all of whom have passed over the Great Divide, except Maj. Bruce, and Cpt. Packwood, who are at this writing (May 1, 1912) both still in the full vigor of their mental faculties and good bodily health.

Following the gold strike of 1849 near Sacramento, prospectors who had moved north discovered gold in Siskiyou County, California, and later in Jackson and Josephine counties in Oregon. Their strikes brought an influx of miners and settlers to Southern Oregon, anxious to share in the gold bonanza. By 1852 pack trains were making regular trips from Scottsburg to the head of tidewater on the Lower Umpqua to the mines in Southern Oregon. Canyonville became an important way station. Rough Canyon Passage made rest stops mandatory. Supplying miners, packers, and early immigrants became good business. Agnes Stenslackin in her book, Destination West, wrote that in 1853, while operating a hotel in Canyonville, she made $2,500 in seven months.
In 1852, Congress appropriated $120,000 to build a military road from California to Oregon. The road through the canyon, however, was not completed until 1858. It was built under the supervision of general "Fighting Joe" Hooker of Civil War fame.
The Hooker survey became the overland road used by freighters and the California-Oregon Stage Company, organized in 1860, and by other north-south bound travelers until 1920. Today I-5 closely follows the original Hooker survey through Canyonville—minus many curves and grades.
While it has been a century since Southern Oregon has heard the pounding hoofbeats and grinding axles of an approaching Portland-to-Sacramento stagecoach, the West's first organized interstate transportation system hasn’t been forgotten. Such stageline stopovers as Wolf Creek Tavern, north of Grants Pass, and Jacksonville, west of Medford, have been commemorated with National Historic Landmark and National Historic District status. In addition to these evocations of the era, the story of a romantic figure, One-Eyed Charlie, help to bring back a time when the Wild West lived up to its name.

One-Eyed Charlie was a stagecoach driver, a job that commanded considerable respect back in 19th Century Oregon. A look at the roadbeds of such wagon-route remnants as I-5 between Grants Pass and Roseburg and OR-238 north of Jacksonville might help you to understand why. Hostile Indians, ruthless highwaymen, and inclement weather plagued these frontier thoroughfares. Even without such hazards, bouncing along for days on end on a buckboard carriage, minus shock absorbers and air conditioning, required considerable fortitude.
Of all the men on the Oregon-to-California line, One-Eyed Charlie, who lost an eye shoeing a horse, was the driver of choice whenever Wells Fargo needed to send a valuable cargo. Despite a salty vocabulary, an opinionated demeanor, and a rough appearance, all of which might have rankled some passengers, no one was better at handling the horses or dealing with adversity.
When the stage would roll into Portland or Sacramento, One-Eyed Charlie would collect his paycheck and disappear for a few days. It was said he was a heavy drinker and gambler during his sojourns deep into the seamy frontier underworld. When it came time to make the next trip through, however, he'd be back at the helm, sober and cantankerous as ever.
One day, One-Eyed Charlie's hard-drivin' hard-drinkin' life caught up with him. When the coroner was preparing the body for burial, he made a surprising discovery. One-Eyed Charlie was really Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst (1812-1870)!
Orphaned at birth, Parkhurst first donned male clothing to escape an orphanage in Massachusetts. She learned how to drive a six-horse team in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and after working in stables until about 1851, she moved to California and settled in Santa Cruz County. She began driving stagecoaches and is reputed to have killed at least one bandit. The advent of the railroad forced her to turn to ranching and lumberjacking.
Shock waves reverberated up and down the West Coast at the realization that a woman had been best at what was considered exclusively a man's domain. The discovery of Parkhurst's true identity made much newspaper copy. The San Francisco Call remarked that "No doubt he was not like other men, indeed, it was generally said among his acquaintances that he was a hermaphrodite" and that "the discoveries of the successful concealment for protracted periods of the female sex are not infrequent."
But the real kicker was that she had voted in the 1860 and 1864 presidential elections for Abraham Lincoln, over half a century before a woman could legally vote! As the voting records have been lost, legal scholars have been unable to prove or debunk the persistent legend of One-Eyed Charlie, but Soquel, California honors Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst as "...the first woman in the world to vote in a presidential election. Although it might well be true that this woman who lived as a man all her life voted here for or against Ulysses S. Grant, she is more a legend for her daring exploits as a stagecoach driver..."

Charlene Parkhurst was not the only Wild West woman who passed as a man or married a woman.
During Thompson's stay at Fort Astoria, he renewed acquaintance with an unusual and colorful woman of the Flatbow Indians. She was to become not only the most publicized personage of early Kutenai history, but, next to Sacajawea, perhaps the best-known Plateau Indian woman of the period. In addition, she was in part responsible for the early exploration of the Pacific Fur Company into the interior. Water-Sitting Grizzly, as she became known to her people, married Thompson's servant, Madame Boisverd, in 1808. He took her to a fur post, probably Kootanae House, to live. There her conduct became so loose, contrary to Kutenai standards, that Thompson was compelled to send her home. Madame Boisverd explained to her people that the white man had changed her sex, by virtue of which she had acquired spiritual power. Thereafter she assumed a masculine name, donned men's clothing and weapons, adopted manly pursuits, and took a woman for a wife.
Her presence later at Spokane House, a trading post in Washington, became objectionable and Finan McDonald, to get rid of her, sent her and her lady lover with a message directed to John Stewart at Fort Estekatadene, in British Columbia. The two lost their way, followed the Columbia to its mouth and wound up at Fort Astoria, a fairly long journey even today. The traders at Fort Astoria elicited from the lovers "important information respecting the country in the interior," and decided to send an expedition under command of David Stuart.
Upon encountering the pair at Fort Astoria, Thompson at once recognized Madam Boisverd and described her background to his hosts. On July 22 a party consisting of the Thompson party, David Stuart and his men, and two Kutenai women, set out for the interior. The latter had agreed to act as guides for the Astorians. Madame Boisverd's prophecies of smallpox and other fearful happenings made en route down the Columbia had not been pleasing to the local Indians, so that upon her return she and her wife were the objects of threats. The couple at one point sought protection from Thompson, who reassured the lower Columbia tribes as to the future. Thompson and his men pushed on to the Snake, ascended that river as far as the Palouse, and then proceeded overland to Spokane House. The Stuart Party, guided by the couple, turned up the Columbia and Okanagan rivers to establish a post in Shuswamp Indian territory.
Madame Boisverd and her companion are said to have continued on to the post in British Columbia and were attacked by hostile Indians during which the former was wounded in the breast. They delivered their dispatch to John Stuart and returned to the Columbia with a reply.

In 1825, a woman named Bundosh, described as wearing men's clothing and a leading character among the Kutenai, is mentioned in the journal of John Work, Hudson's Bay Company trader at Flathead Post. Twelve years later the Kutenai berdache is mentioned in the journal of William H. Gray, the Protestant missionary, who was journeying to the states and traveling with Francis Ermatinger, the Flathead trader. A party of Flathead had been surrounded by Blackfeet, and Bundosh had gone back and forth trying to mediate between them. On her last trip she deceived the Blackfeet while the Flathead, as she knew, were making their escape to Fort Hall. Bundosh was killed by the Blackfeet after saving the party of Flathead, the people with whom she had been intimate in her later years.
Jeanne Bonnet grew up in San Francisco as a tomboy and in the 1870s, in her early 20s, was arrested dozens of times for wearing male attire. She visited local brothels as a male customer, and eventually organized French prostitutes in San Francisco into an all-woman gang whose members swore off prostitution, had nothing to do with men, and supported themselves by shoplifting. She traveled with a "special friend," Blanche Buneau, whom the newspapers described as "strangely and powerfully attached" to Jeanne. Her success at separating prostitutes from their pimps led to her murder in 1876.
Trinidad restaurateur Charles "Frenchey" Vobaugh was a woman who passed as a man and, along with "his wife," assumed the outward appearance of a mixed-sex couple in order to remain married for 30 years. Colorado newspapers were full of successful lesbian and gay elopements.
In 1889, the town of Emma was "rent from center to circumference" over the "sensational love affair between Miss Clara Dietrich, postmistress and general storekeeper, and Ora Chatfield." Letters written between them caused the Denver papers to remark that the "love that existed between the two parties was of no ephemeral nature, but as strong as that of a strong man and his sweetheart." Despite attempts to separate them, the lady lovers successfully eloped. "If the case ever comes into court," wrote the Denver Times, "from a scientific standpoint alone it will attract widespread attention."

In American history and folklore, Calamity Jane is the popular name for Martha Jane Canary (1852-1903), who was noted for her marksmanship, trick riding, and cross dressing. She wore buckskin and "passed" as a male scout for General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876).

A historical marker in Custer, Montana notes that once Calamity Jane stopped in this "lurid" frontier town to "whoop things up," which usually meant she was up to her old tricks—such as firing her guns at the saloon floor to make the tenderfeet dance.

Calamity Jane always claimed she had been secretly married to Wild Bill Hickok (1837-1876), the dashing frontier marshal who was shot in a poker game in Deadwood, South Dakota on August 2, 1876. However, some accounts allege that Calamity was a lesbian and that her affair with Wild Bill Hickok was a coverup, because he was said to be gay.
Hollywood's movie Calamity Jane, starring Doris Day (1924-?) and Howard Keel (1919-?), tells how she wins the love of Hickock. But in the 1995 release, Buffalo Girls, she anti-marriage sentiments when she claims that women could do only two things in the West: "wife'n" and "whor'n!" She is also portrayed as a lesbian.
A heroine in town for her devotion to the miners during a smallpox epidemic, Calamity Jane returned to Deadwood in May 1903 after years of roaming the West as a scout, bullwhacker, and notorious hooligan. She told friends she was "ailing," and on August 2, she announced, "It's the 27th anniversary of Bill's death. Bury me next to Bill." Ten thousand mourners marched in her cortege, and Calamity was buried here in a black skirt and dainty white blouse, closer to Wild Bill in death than she probably ever was in life. Matching monuments mark their graves. Mistrustful of her claim to be Bill's wife, the townspeople labeled her grave "Mrs. M. E. Burke," for one of her traditionally accepted husbands. But her famous nickname is carved in bold white letters on the stone wall above.

Born in Virginia, legendary writer Willa Cather (1873-1947) moved with her family to Red Cloud, Nebraska, when she was 11 and launched a now legendary four-year gender rebellion as the rough-and-ready "William" Cather Junior, complete with male attire, crew cut, and a convincingly bass voice. Cather traded trousers for a skirt when she entered college, but classmates still remarked on her "masculine personality."
The author of 19 books in a variety of genres, Cather explored the power of the land and the complex, passionate relationships of those who dwell on it. She often used Nebraska and Western pioneer farm settings to frame vividly crafted characters, including memorably strong women.
Before her death, Cather took pains to destroy as much of her personal correspondence as she could lay her hands on, and it is likely that she would have fought any attempt to consider her writing in a lesbian context. Clues to her sense of personal identity, however, survive in letters written while in college to Louise Pound in which she laments her "unnatural" attraction and love for the young woman. Some biographers and critics now acknowledge her lesbianism and explore its impact on her writing, and historians cite her reticence as evidence of the dramatic increase in social awareness and disapproval of lesbianism in the 1890s, contrasting her discomfort with the acceptance given previously to romantic friendships between women. Cather appears to have been in love with Isabelle McClung in Pittsburgh and Edith Lewis with whom she lived nearly 40 years in New York.

It would be difficult to find a subject more original than the life and career of Alberta Lucille Hart, who became the physician and novelist Dr. Alan L. Hart (1890-1962).
Hart grew up in Albany as Lucille Hart and attended Albany College (now Lewis & Clark College) and Stanford University. She graduated from Albany College in 1912, and in 1917 obtained a Doctor of Medicine Degree from University of Oregon Medical Department in Portland (now Oregon Health Sciences University School of Medicine). She was the only woman in the class and took top academic honors. She worked at a Red Cross hospital in Philadelphia for a short period following graduation.
According to psychiatrist J. Allen Gilbert, who Hart consulted, Hart was sexually attracted to women, often dressed in men's clothes, and "had a loathing of the female type mind." Hart married Inez Stark in California in February 1918, using the name Robert Allen Bamford, Jr. Her therapy with Dr. Gilbert led Hart to have a hysterectomy later that year. She then assumed the identity and clothes of a man, renamed herself Alan L. Hart, and began medical practice in Southwest Oregon at Gardiner Hospital. There, Dr. Gilbert wrote, "she was recognized by a former associate, [and] the hounding process began." The Gardiner incident was apparently not the only one in Hart's career. The challenges of Hart's passing as a man in the medical profession and literary circles for four decades involved a complicated life of deception and discrimination and led to numerous moves, job changes and financial challenges.
As Hart wrote of the character Sandy Farquhar in his 1936 novel The Undaunted:

He has been driven from place to place, from job to job, for 15 years because of something he could not alter any more than he could change the color of his eyes. Gossip, scandal, rumor always drove him on. It did no good to live alone, to make few acquaintances and no intimates; sooner or later someone always turned up to recognize him. And then there was that wretched business of resigning by request to be gone through again, and after that the concoction of the plausible story to account for the resignation and the ordeal of hunting another job without explaining exactly why he had left the old one and, at the same time, without lying about it. Each time he underwent these humiliations, his self-respect seemed first to writhe and then to shrink.

Hart's practice in Gardiner lasted less than six months. In 1919 and 1920 he practiced in rural Southern Montana "until the crash of the autumn of 1920 wiped out most of the Montana farmers and stockmen, and me along with them." When he could get work, Hart spent the remaining years of his medical career in public health positions, primarily working in radiology. He held positions in tuberculosis sanitariums and x-ray clinics in New Mexico, Illinois, Washington (Spokane, Tacoma and Seattle), and Idaho. He obtained a Masters Degree in radiology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1930 and a Masters Degree in public health from Yale in 1948. Hart was a prominent figure in the tuberculosis field, and for the last 16 years of his life he headed mass x-ray programs in Connecticut for the State Health Department. He wrote one book and numerous articles in his professional field.
In The Undaunted, Hart writes of Sandy Farquhar:

He went into radiology because he thought it wouldn't matter so much in a laboratory what a man's personality was. But wherever he went, scandal followed him sooner or later. If he could have gone in for himself, I think he might have succeeded in the face of all of the odds for he was a grand man with sick people. But he had no capital and so had to work for other doctors or hospitals all his life. That ruined all his chances because eventually his story would get around and then he’d be forced to leave. "Resigning by request" was the way he put it.

Inez Stark left Hart in 1923, and they were divorced in 1925. Later that year he married Edna Ruddick, a school teacher who became a social worker and administrator. During the Depression in the 1930s, Edna and Alan Hart lived in Seattle where Alan had difficulties getting full-time work. He wrote: "I am sure I would have done something rather desperate if I had not turned to writing." Fortunately he did. The result was four novels with Northwest settings, published from 1935 to 1942, which constitute a significant body of social fiction and expose greed and prejudice in the medical profession. Each presents sympathetic portraits of underdogs seeking social justice and changes in the medical profession.
In 1935, Hart wrote a reviewer: "The ugly things that have grown up in medicine are the result of the ugliness and falsity of society as a whole, of our American preoccupation of things rather than their use for a fuller human life. These things are not the fault of the individual physician; and neither can they be remedied by him. So long as the American people are permeated with the spirit of

I'm going to get mine, no matter how," just so long will that attitude filter into all the professions; doctors are people first and are affected by the current ideals just as other people are.

Hart's first novel, Doctor Mallory (1935), is the story of an idealistic general practitioner in a small town in Oregon. It is based on Hart's experience practicing medicine in Gardiner. After the publication of Doctor Mallory, Hart wrote that one of his ambitions was "to be an 'official observer' of the medical profession during the remainder of my life" and "to write a novel about a research institute, another about hospitals, another about a family of doctors." He eventually wrote all three. Hart's other novels are In The Lives of Men (1937) and Doctor Finlay Sees It Through (1942).
Hart’s novels received a fair amount of critical attention and were reviewed in The New York Times, The New York Herald-Tribune, Saturday Review of Literature and other leading publications of the times. Intriguingly, in reviewing In The Lives of Men, the Saturday Review’s critic wrote that, "for a doctor, he seems to know surprisingly little of women. His portraits of them are little more than profile sketches. Those he approves are colorless and negative, the others incredibly cold and selfish." Although Hart was one of the few pre-WWII writers in the Pacific Northwest who wrote novels dealing with social issues, he has been overlooked in studies of the region's literature.
Edna and Alan Hart moved to Connecticut in 1946 and purchased a home in West Hartford in 1950. They were active in the community and in the Unitarian church, and lived together until Alan died of heart disease on July 1, 1962. In accordance with Alan's will, his body was cremated. The ashes were shipped to Port Angeles, Washington for scattering. The will also provided that no memorial be erected or created, and he instructed his attorney to destroy certain letters and photographs contained in a bank safety deposit box and in a locked box in his home.
Edna Ruddick Hart lived until 1982, when she died at the age of 88. Her obituary said she was "always vitally interested in young people, [and] she aided a generation of students attending local colleges by providing them rooms in her home." At the memorial service held for Edna, one of the speakers said, "I remember her stories about her husband, Alan Hart. I always felt that it was as if he never died because of her memories and their special relationship."
Hart's contributions to medicine continued after his death at his old medical school, even though few people there have heard of him. The residue of Edna Hart's estate was left to the Medical Research Foundation (now Oregon Health Sciences Foundation),

in loving memory of Alan L. Hart, MD, a graduate of the University of Oregon Medical School, whose mother died of leukemia, whose life was devoted to medicine and whose earnest wish was to someday give financial support to medical research in its efforts to conquer leukemia and other diseases.

Each year, the Alan L. and Edna Ruddick Hart Fund at OHSF funds research grants in the field of leukemia.
Hart’s two marriages and his two "lives" obviously present complex issues of sexuality, gender, identity and sexual discrimination. Jonathan Ned Katz, who revealed the double life of Hart, maintains in his works that Hart was "clearly a lesbian, a woman-loving woman." Recently, Katz has been quoted as saying he would not make that claim today. In Portland, lesbian and transsexual advocates have each claimed Hart as a representative of their causes.
In her recent book Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton, Diane Wood Middlebrook writes that Alan Hart and the musician Billy Tipton, who grew up as Dorothy Tipton, but lived as a man from age 19 until she died at 74:

seem birds of a feather. As young women, they were sexually attracted to women and socially attracted to work reserved for men. Each was a self-confident pragmatist who intended to get what she wanted, and each devised a home remedy for the problem of being female in a man's world.

After Billy Tipton's death, some observers lamented that neither medical technologies nor cultural and political acceptance of homosexuality had been available to ease Billy's path. Yet the examples of Alan Hart and Billy Tipton provide historical information too specific to ignore. In each case, a fairly simple disguise provided conditions for the liberation of a distinctive creativity. Neither of them lacked for work, companionship, or sex. They were successful in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of the people closest to them, they did no evil.
The life of Dr. Alan L. Hart involves considerably more than the sexual and gender aspects of his life which drew the initial attention. Hart deserves to be remembered as a remarkable person of tenacity, intellect, idealism and courage, who made contributions to medicine, literature and humanity under difficult circumstances.

On May 16, 1885, the secretary of war wrote a short note to an officer of the Quartermaster Division of the US Army which prompted one of the most remarkable experiments performed in the country before the Civil War. The entire text of the note is given because it opens up all the avenues of inquiry that will be explored in this paper.

I hereby furnish, for your information and guidance, a copy of the instructions this day given to Lt. D. D. Porter, US Navy, who is associated with you in the duty of carrying into effect the law making an appropriation for the importation of camels.

From this almost laconic note stems one of the most amazing chapters in the story of the expansion of the American West.
It is not the intention of this paper to relate the history of the camel after his arrival in the US. Most of the facts have been buried in fantastic tales and legends which, although they had their bases in truth, have sometimes been exaggerated beyond the realm of credibility. As interesting as this part of the camel episode is (and it also has its comic moments), even more arresting is the story of the men who projected the idea of bringing the exotic animals from the still fabled East and put in motion the complicated machinery which finally landed them in America. It is this aspect rather than the legends which grew up later that will be examined. Since the real facts are stranger than fiction, there is no need for exaggeration.
Many people will be surprised to know that camels ranged the American western desert a hundred years ago. Moreover, even one hundred years ago, when one of the "ships of the desert" plodded in sight along the trails from Texas to California, people could hardly believe their eyes. Tall tales of the camels began to grow from the moment of their arrival in America, and since then, legend has generally replaced truth. Incredible as the legends are, however, almost as unbelievable were good reasons for importing camels in mid-19th Century, and there were sensible men who sponsored the experiment. The story of the camels is also the story of a remarkable group of men who later attained fame in other fields.
During the Westward expansion immediately following the discovery of gold in California in 1849, the authorities in Washington and forward-looking commercial interests in New York began to visualize safe and permanent land routes across the southwestern section of the country now know as New Mexico and Arizona. The government, as well as the financiers in New York, had in mind the safety of emigrating citizens and the pacification of the Indians between settlements along the Missouri and the rapidly populating territories of the coastal Southwest. The immediate commercial aspect included the transportation of goods and passengers in well protected convoys and stage coaches with future prospects of a railroad. Among the obstacles to be conquered was the great expanse of desert with its intense heat and lack of water. Washington was concerned not only with the commercial aspect of the expansion of the western territories but also with the protection of the newly acquired land from foreign aggression. Since the discovery of gold in California, the territory had become even more valuable to the economy of the country, so it was of primary concern for the government to seek a method of rapid transportation to its new territory on the Pacific Coast.
Even before 1849, however, the need for rapid transportation to the Far West had been felt, and tentative proposals had been made in Congress. As far back as 1836, George H. Crosman suggested the use of camels in exploring the western territories. His proposal carried weight because he had had experience in combating hostile Indians who were among the major obstacles in the path of westward expansion. Col. Crosman asked Maj. Henry C. Wayne of the Quartermaster Division of the US Army to study the question. At first amused but quickly convinced by the novel idea, Maj. Wayne suggested to Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), then US senator from Mississippi and chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, that camels should be imported from Turkey or Egypt for military use. In the systematic research about camels that followed this remarkable proposal in 1848, it was learned that as early as the 16th century, the Spanish had introduced camels into South America, that there had been a shipment to Jamaica for work in the mines and plantations, and that some of the animals had been brought to Virginia in 1701. The obvious failure of the first ventures was brushed aside in the rush to obtain new means of transportation across the almost impassable expanse of land beyond the Mississippi.
The Mexican War, which ended in 1848, had added to the US all the land which now is included in the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, and the western parts of Colorado and New Mexico, an area of 529,000 square miles. In the treaty that ended the war, the US had agreed to protect the Mexican border towns from the Apache, who had the advantage of knowing the country well and of being mounted on swift horses. Some means of rapid retaliation on the marauding Indians were especially pressing. The fact that the camel was represented as being unusually swift was as important to those advocating importation of the animals as the fact that the camel could thrive in a desert where food and water were so scarce that pack mules and horses perished.
The person who listened most sympathetically to the advocates of the camel was Jefferson Davis, who studied the subject form every angle and became more and more convinced that the camel was the solution to the military transportation problem. There was an abundance of material to study and people to consult. Books of travel have always been popular reading, and there had been a great number written about the Near East in the last 50 years. French travel books went back as far as Travernier in the 17th Century but also included accounts of the famous camel corps of Napoleon in his spectacular conquest of Egypt in 1798-1799 as well as recent reports about explorations in Asia. Among the German volumes were scientific treatises about the anatomy, habits, and habitats of the camel. The British accounts of African and Asian explorations and the published accounts of the many attempts to find the source of the Nile and the Niger were avidly read by the Americans. Also the excitement generated by the expeditions sent out by the British Museum between 1846 and 1848 was infectious. The tangible results in the form of the monumental remains from Africa and especially from Babylon and Nineveh were in London for the American traveler to see (and continue to see to this day in the British Museum). Undoubtedly, such evidence affected the intellectual ferment of the young nation which had a terra incognita of its own to explore, conquer, and settle. It was a subject which spurred to action government officials, army and navy officers, financiers, and ordinary citizens. To most dwellers on the eastern coast of the US, the new western reaches of the American continent were as unknown as the Arabian desert. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the middle of the 19th Century before the invention of the automobile, camels were accepted seriously as the means by which the American desert could be conquered.
The Senate heard about the plan for the first time from Jefferson Davis during the presentation of the Army Appropriations Bill on March 3, 1851. Routine discussion about various parts of the bill had been disposed of before the section relating to the transportation of the army to the western territories was introduced. Almost casually, senator Davis announced that he had an amendment to offer:

For the purchase of 50 camels with their equipage, and the employment of ten Arabs for one year, $30,000.

The amendment was greeted with such hearty laughter that Senator Davis replied somewhat heatedly with an abridged version of the many reports he had gathered about the usefulness of the camel in the Near East, connecting the information to parallel situations in the American West:

I am sorry that any of my friends should laugh... But I think if senators were aware of the extent to which this animal is used, they would be seriously inclined to adopt this proposition. It is truly, as figuratively, the "ship of the desert"... It is used by the English army in the East Indies in transportation, and even carrying light guns on their backs. It was used by Napoleon in his Egyptian campaign. He understood the value of the dromedary corps in dealing with the race to which our wild Apaches and Comanches bear a close resemblance. If gentlemen knew how great is the embarrassment, especially in the cavalry corps, in waiting for a great train of mules to draw the guns with which they are encumbered, I do not think the proposition would excite a laugh. Nor would gentlemen smile... if they knew how essential they were in the pursuit of wild Indians, who now escape from our cavalry in nearly every pursuit which is made... These dromedaries who drink enough water before they start to last 100 miles, traveling continually without rest at the rate of 15 or 20 miles an hour, would overtake these bands of Indians. This the cavalry cannot do.

In spite of his assurance that the proposed $30,000 would cover all costs, even to sending the Arabs back home after a year, and that the importation of camels would not only help in the transportation problem in the West but be the start of a profitable industry in new livestock, the Senate rejected the amendment, 20 to 19.
But Davis was convinced of the practicality of the camel. When Franklin Pierce was elected president in 1852, he lost no time in having an amendment proposed to the annual Army Appropriations Bill introduced on August 28, 1852, by James Shields (c1806-1879) of Illinois, now the chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. It is evident that the whole subject of camels had been carefully studied during the intervening year and a half. A new approach was offered, and the amendment now stated

that the Secretary of War be directed to procure a sufficient number of camels, to ascertain whether or not they can be naturalized and rendered serviceable upon this continent, and that the sum of $30,000 be appropriated for the purpose.

Confessing that he had voted against the amendment in the proceeding Congress, Senator Shields continued,

Since then [Mar. 5, 1851], the Committee on Military Affairs have made a thorough examination of this matter, and they have come to the conclusion, that if camels can be naturalized and acclimated in this country, through the whole South and Southwest, and away to the Pacific, they will perform better service for us than any mode of conveyance that we have yet adopted. All that we want is to made the experiment.

In spite of the fact that the amendment was carried by a vote of 26 to 16 in the Senate, however, it was killed in the House of Representatives.
The research that went on behind the scenes was intensive and exhaustive. Maj. Wayne contributed his monograph entitled "General Remarks On the Use of Camels and Dromedaries For Transportation and Military Purposes Other Than Those of Burden—As For Expresses, The Pursuit of Marauders, Etc." He also translated from the French language a recent account of the use of the camel in Persia. A former Ambassador to Turkey, George P. Marsh (1801-1882), gave popular lectures on the subject which had "long since engaged my attention as a problem of much economical interest" at the newly established Smithsonian Institution in Washington to which the public as well as government officials flocked to hear. Marsh, who was later to become a professor of linguistics at Columbia University, had studied nearly everything that had ever been written on the subject and quoted copiously from all languages, ancient and modern, to prove the usefulness of the animals in the western deserts of the US. His information was persuasive because he had traveled extensively in the Near East (some of his journeys by camel-back) and had observed the camel at close range in Turkey, then an empire that comprised the lands surrounding the Mediterranean.
Nor were the money interests absent. In 1854, a charter was granted by the state of New York to the American Camel Company for the importation of camels. A 15-page publicity pamphlet contained a copy of the charter and an article "showing that the camel is the animal of all others the best adapted for the business of transportation over the desert lying between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean." Legends started before the camel arrived in the US. The first of many fictional works, The Camel Hunt: A Narrative of Personal Adventure, by Joseph Warren Fahrens, appeared in 1853.
The influence of Jefferson Davis was felt beyond his own bailiwick of the War Department. In the Agricultural Report for 1853, the subject of the camel as a beast of burden for military use was covered in some detail. It was clearly stated that most of the information upon the "habits, management, diseases, and peculiarities" of the camel was found in a manuscript by General Harlan, of Cochransville, Chester County, Pennsylvania,

who resided 19 years in the East, during a part of which period he was actively involved in the military operations of Dost Mahomed, Amur of Cabul, and Gungeet Sing, Prince of Punjaub, prior to the conquest of Cabul by the British. As general of the staff of the former, he commanded a division of the Army of Cabul, destined to the invasion of Bulkh, a part of ancient Bactria. On this expedition he was accompanied by a caravan of 1,600 camels... in addition to 400 attached to his own command.

After such irrefutable evidence of the usefulness of the camel in military affairs, the Agricultural Report warned the reader that "the idea of the domestication of the camel tribe in the US is subject of great importance in various ways, that it is surrounded with difficulties not likely to be foreseen by careless thinkers, and that the failure of the design, through any defect of plan, would be a national misfortune."
On the heels of this report came Davis' annual report as secretary of war on December 1, 1853, in which he quoted extensive summary of the explorations for the proposed railroad to the West, he reviewed patiently what he had already said about historical use of the camel and its importance to the army in the western territories in times of war and peace. In speaking of the possible necessity of defending the Pacific coast, he summarized his report with

For military purposes, for expresses, and for reconnaissance, it is believed the dromedary would supply a want now seriously felt in our service; and for transportation with troops rapidly moving across the country, the camel, it is believed, would remove the obstacle which now serves greatly to diminish the value and efficiency of our troops on the western frontier.

Again, Congress failed to appropriate necessary funds. A year passed; and on December 4, 1854, secretary Davis again made a plea in his annual report:

I again invite attention to the advantage to be anticipated from the use of camels and dromedaries for military and other purposes; and for the reasons set forth in my last annual report, recommend that an appropriation be made to introduce a small number of the several varieties of this animal to test their adaptation to our country.

It was conceded by all that well defined overland routes were absolute necessities to the thousands of immigrants who were streaming across country to the gold diggings in California. Reports of many expeditions by army engineers and independent interests were being studied by government agencies and officials. A wagon road was regarded by financiers as the first step toward the building of a railroad. A popular hero, Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who had crossed the continent with the first lump of gold from California to dazzle the eyes of Washington and New York and had made several exploring trips for the railroad interests, was convinced that camels could be successfully used in his journeys. On one of his trips from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, he had been accompanied by Gwinn Harris Heap, whose father had been US Consul at Tunis where young Heap had spent some of his youth. His knowledge of the Asian camel, coupled with his experience of crossing the country with Beale in 1853, resulted in his attaching a short monograph, "Camels, as a Substitute for Horses, Mules, Etc." to his published account of their journey.
By this time, public enthusiasm had been aroused throughout the country. The newly arrived settlers in California joined the demand for swifter communication between the East and the West, and early in 1855, the editor of La Estrella de Los Angeles (later The Los Angeles Star) put in a good word for the camels:

We predict that in a few years these extraordinary and useful animals will be browsing upon hills and valleys, and numerous caravans will be arriving and departing daily. Let us have the incomparable dromedary, with Adams & Company's express men arriving here triweekly, with letters and packages in five or six days from Salt Lake and 15 or 18 days from the Missouri.

The forward looking editor called upon financiers to undertake the job, "for we have not much faith that Congress will do anything in the matter."
But he was mistaken, for popular demand had been so overwhelming that when Congress met on March 3, 1855, Secretary Davis had the satisfaction of hearing as a part of the Army Appropriations Bill,

And be sit further enacted, that the sum of 30,000 be, and the same is hereby, appropriated, to be expended under the direction of the War Department in the purchase of camels and importation of dromedaries, to be employed for military purposes.

Davis let no time elapse in assembling a remarkable and resourceful group of men. His first choice as over-all manager of the enterprise was the knowledgeable Maj. Wayne, who had pumped information to him since 1848. Lt. David Dixon Porter (1813-1891) of the US Navy, a kinsman of E. F. Beale and brother-in-law of heap, was appointed commander of the navy storeship, Supply, which was to transport the camels from the Near East. Gwinn Harris Heap, with his knowledge of the languages and customs of the East and his recent experience with Beale, was recruited as buying agent. The three men, Wayne, Porter, and Heap, made an unbeatable trio, completely dedicated to the successful culmination of the task Davis gave them.
The short note dated May 16, 1855, quoted [at the beginning of this paper], is official in tone and does not reveal the close bond which existed between all the men engaged in the enterprise, nor does it give a hint of the satisfaction that Davis felt. In the letter which accompanied the note, however, the secretary poured out to lt. Porter detailed and specific instructions which showed not only his amazing accumulation of knowledge about camels but also his personal concern for the success of the experiment. He had already arranged with the Secretary of the Navy for the Supply under Porter to rendezvous with Wayne in Spezzia, Italy. On his way to the Mediterranean, Wayne was to consult with experts in England, France, and Italy, and when the two officers joined forces at Spezzia, they were to go into the Levant, to Persia, to Africa, or wherever necessary to obtain the best breed of camel.
For seven months, beginning in July 1855, Wayne, Porter, and Heap sought information and camels in London, Paris, Pisa, Malta, Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo, Smyrna, and Crimea, where the Crimean War was being waged. By February 15, 1856, they had selected a cargo of 33 camels and left Smyrna on the voyage to Indianola, Texas, where they arrived on April 29. The second trip took only six months, Porter and heap leaving America in July 1856, and returning in January 1857, with 44 camels, which were immediately sent to Camp Verde, Texas, where Wayne had established a successful scientific breeding and training encampment with the first shipment.
The entire project had been carried out with enthusiasm from its inception in spite of almost insuperable diplomatic difficulties with foreign governments and unbelievable trickery and chicanery on the part of lying and thieving camel dealers and individuals in Alexandria and Smyrna. Remarkable physical endurance was displayed by every person engaged in the undertaking—from Wayne, Porter, and heap, down to the lowest sailor who had volunteered for the extraordinary voyage. Thanks to the imagination, enterprise, and energy displayed by lt. Porter in converting a conventional supply ship to an efficient sea-going camel carrier, the animals were not only transported safely from Turkey to Texas, but during the two voyages, important scientific experiments were conducted on board which were to further the adaptation of the camels to the American environment when they finally arrived.
But time was running out for the experiment before it had fairly begun on American soil. The first rumblings could be heard of the coming Civil War, which was to stop the orderly development of the project and finally kill all hopes for its success. It was not the fault of the brilliant men who had carried out the usual assignment with such high expectations that the camel is not a domesticated animal in America today. Even before the second herd of 44 camels had arrived on American shores, Maj. Wayne saw trouble ahead. Writing to Jefferson Davis from Camp Verde on December 4, 1856, he reaffirmed his faith in the project and reported that the experiment had proved successful so far, but he added,

As the political changes of the coming year may terminate your official connection with the War Department, and later the policy heretofore observed in the experiment, I have thought it advisable to make a few suggestions at this early date, that if you agree with my a system may be organized, that the matter may be left to your successor in as complete a form as possible.

There must have been a number of senators who never had believed in the camel program. There is a hint of this doubting attitude in Maryland Senator James A. Pearce's resolution which was introduced in the Senate on February 2, 1857:

Resolved, that the secretary of war be directed to furnish the Senate with any information in his possession, showing the results of the trial of the camel as the a beast of burden and for the transportation of troops; and showing, also, the characteristics and habits of the animal, and the number imported up to the present time.

Events moved swiftly after the Pearce resolution, which had been passed with unanimous consent. By February 12, Davis had directed Wayne to submit his suggestions for the care of the camels to Maj. Gen. Thomas S. Jesup, quartermaster general of the army, in a letter to whom Wayne summarized his position succinctly:

...from my first connection with the experiment, in 1848, to the present time, I have never entertained the idea that the benefits to be derived from the introduction of the animal among us would be extensively realized in our day. I regard it more in the light of a legacy to posterity, of precisely the same character as the introduction of the horse and other domestic animals by the early settlers of America has been to us... The military benefits to be derived from the introduction of the camel, are in my view, of little moment in comparison with its bearing upon trade and communication throughout the vast interior of our continent.

On February 26, Jefferson Davis had assembled the entire correspondence, documents, translated articles, logs of both voyages of the Supply, bills, reports, and latest news of the welfare of the animals and submitted the lot to the president pro tem. of the Senate with a covering letter which included his concluding sentence, “The limited trial which has been made has fully realized my expectations, and has increased my confidence in the success of the experiment.
Without Wayne’s supervision, the camels at Camp Verde remained in a state of limbo until the new secretary of war, John B. Floyd (1806-1863), decided to test them by having them used on an expedition to survey a wagon road from Fort Defiance, New Mexico, to the Colorado River along the 35th Parallel. The leader of the expedition was E. F. Beale, who had thought about camels ever since he had crossed Death Valley with Christopher "Kit" Carson (1809-1868) before the goldrush.

Beale had taken with him for nightly reading Abbé Huc’s Travels In China and Tartary and was convinced that camels could be used equally as well in America as in Asian deserts. When the expedition started May 12, 1857, Beale took with him the younger generation, sons of some of the men who had been connected with the experiment from its inception. Among them were Porter Heap, son of G. H. Heap, Hampton Porter, nephew of D. D. Porter, and May Humphreys Stacey, a young man of 19 who kept a detailed journal of most of the trip. His entry for June 21 records his first sight of the camels which had been brought from Camp Verde:

The first intimation we had of their approach was the jingling of the large bells suspended from their necks. Presently, one, then two, three, four, until the whole 25 had come within range in the dim twilight. And thus they came, these huge ungainly beasts of the desert, accompanied by their attendants, Turks, Greeks and Armenians. Who would have thought, 100 years ago, that now camels would be used on this continent as beasts of burden? ...It was a fine scene, and one calculated to awaken curious sensations in the breast of the observer. What are these camels the representation of? Not a high civilization exactly, but of the "go-aheadness" of the American character, which subdues even nature by its energy and perseverance.

Beale's personal diary shows deep anxiety for the success of the camels. Starting out after their many months of ease at Camp Verde, they seemed "soft" for the first month, but soon Beale could write, "The more I see of them the more interested in them I become, and the more I am convinced of their usefulness. Their perfect docility and patience under difficulties renders them invaluable, and my only regret is that I have not double the number." At El Paso, Texas, on July 24, he could report to the secretary of war,

It gives me great pleasure to report the entire success of the expedition with camels so far as I have tried it. Laboring under all the disadvantages arising out of the fact that we have not one single man who knows anything whatever of camels or how to pack them, we have nevertheless arrived here without an accident and although we have used the camels ever day with heavy packs, have fewer sore backs and disabled ones by far than would have been the case traveling with pack mules... If the Department intends carrying their importation of the camels further... I would strongly recommend... that a corps of Mexicans be employed to herding and using them. The Americans of the class who seek such employment are totally unfit for it, being for the most part harsh, cruel and impatient with animals entrusted to their care.

Beale, the most sympathetic and understanding of all the people who used the animals, had unerringly pointed out one of the most important factors of the subsequent failure of the camel experiment—the lack of proper personnel. There were also other adverse circumstances working against them. The most sobering reality was that Jefferson Davis was no longer in a position to protect the project. After 1857, his attention was increasingly turned to political issues which finally led to the outbreak of the war between the states and made him the president of the Confederacy in 1861. During the Civil War, other swifter and more efficient modes of communication had been so well established between the East and the West that the plodding camel became first an embarrassment, then an encumbrance, and finally a derelict out into the desert to shift for himself.
The complete story of the camel is not generally known, for popular taletellers seldom care why the experiment was started or how the camel came to the American continent. Moreover, with the exception of avid historians of Western America, few people know the end of the story. Some storytellers will regale the willing listener by the hour with the saga of Greek George or Hi Jolly [Hadji Ali], two of the camel drivers who came with the first shipment and stayed to become legends in their own right before they died in the first decade of the 20th Century.

Hi Jolly's tomb, with its pyramid-shaped monument, is an impressive sight in Quartzsite [Arizona]. It is constructed of black malapai rock, petrified wood, gold-bearing quartz, and natural red, white and blue rocks (symbolizing the flag). Crowning the pyramid is the silhouette of a one-humped camel made of copper. A vault in the base contains a few old letters, Hi Jolly's government contracts as camel driver and scout, and less than a dollar in change (his total wealth when he died). Also, the vault contains something else that was dear to his heart—the ashes of Topsy, the last of the original camels he brought to this country.

Other storytellers will follow the tragicomic camels as they blundered in and out of the rapidly growing centers of civilization and finally wandered into and remained in the gradually diminishing western desert until the last one died in 1934. Most of the tales are true stories that are hard to believe, and they prove again the old adage that "Truth is stranger than fiction."

Mr. Editor: Subjoined you will find a list of the principle articles necessary for an outfit to Oregon or California, which may be useful to some of your readers. It has been carefully prepared from correct information derived from intelligent persons who have made the trip. The wagons should be new, made of thoroughly seasoned timber, and well ironed and not too heavy; and large double sheets. There should be at least four yoke of good oxen to each wagon—one yoke to be considered as extra, and to be used only in cases of emergency. Every family should have at least two good milk cows, as milk is a great luxury on the road.
The amount of provisions should be as follows; to each person except infants:

Each family should also take the following articles in proportions to the number as follows:

* From 1 to 5 pounds tea
* From 10 to 50 pounds rice
* From 1/2 to 2 bushels beans
* From 1/2 to 2 bushels dried fruit
* From 1/2 to 5 pounds saleratus
* From 5 to 50 pounds soap

Cheese, dried pumpkins, onions and a small portion of corn meal may be taken by those who desire them. The latter article, however, does not keep well. No furniture should be taken, and as few cooking utensils as are indispensably needed. Every family ought to have a sufficient supply of clothing for at least one year after their arrival, as everything of that kind is high in those countries. Some few cattle should be driven for beef, but much loose stock will be a great annoyance. Some medicines should also be found in every family, the kind and quantity may be determined by consulting the family physician.
I would suggest to each family the propriety of taking a small sheet-iron cooking stove with fixtures, as the wind and rain often times renders it almost impossible to cook without them, they are light and cost but little. All the foregoing articles may be purchased on good terms in this place.

The immigration encouraged by the missionaries began in the early 1840s, for a number of reasons. The Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio river valleys from which so many of the pioneers started out was the most economically depressed region of the country, and this, combined with the promise of free land in the West, was a weighty incentive. Also, no region in the country was more unhealthy than these valleys, malaria endemic and a scourge; whereas Oregon already had its reputation of being a tonic place. Finally there was the plain American restlessness.

As there were different reasons for the immigration, so there were different kinds of immigrants. There were the enterprising, but there were also the failures and the lawless. Also, there was one large body of pioneers, nearly a half, who in many cases set out with much reluctance—the women! On the whole, however, the wagontrain pioneers were a fairly homogeneous body. Except for the bachelor drovers and household hands, most were families. Almost all were protestants. Very few were people of means, and very few were impoverished, since it took money to buy the gear to get to Oregon. Finally, the great majority were farmers.
A distinction is sometimes made between the kinds of people who went to Oregon and those who favored California. And some say the distinction is valid. From the beginning California tended to attract the single adventurer, particularly with the advent of the goldrush. Oregon, on the other hand, from the beginning often attracted sober and respectable individuals. Hall J. Kelley, the Boston schoolteacher who first encouraged immigration to Oregon, called for "pious and educated young men," and, as we have seen, the first American squatters in Oregon were in fact missionaries. Also that memorial carried by Lee to Congress in 1838 made it clear that the squatters did not care to be joined by the "reckless adventurer," by the "renegade of civilization" or by the "unprincipled shapers of Spanish America," that is, Californians. Some of the diaries and letters of the immigrants tend to confirm this attitude. Charles Pitman, traveling with a group bound for California who had begun to have second thoughts, wrote

If things are not as anticipated when we left, in fact the aristocracy or respectable portion of the companies will go to this valley (in Oregon).

...almost all the respectable portion of the California immigrants are going on the new road to Oregon and nearly all of the respectable immigrants that went last year to California came this year to Oregon.

It is marvelously summed up in the apocryphal story of the branch in the Oregon Trail, the route south to California marked by a cairn of gold quartz, the none north by a sign lettered To Oregon. Those who could read came here.

The trek started in the spring at Independence, Missouri, that "great Babel upon the border of the wilderness." Here the wagons—on the average ten feet long with two feet wide sides—were stocked: tools, and clothes, seed, perhaps a harmonium, a clock; and the staples, bacon, beans, sugar, salt, coffee and probably a keg of whiskey. They had 2,000 miles to go and it would take six months.
Before starting out, or shortly thereafter, captains were chosen and, because they were entering a land where no civil authority existed, it was necessary to draw up regulations covering all aspects of behavior.

...no profane swearing, no obscene conversation, or immoral conduct, allowed in this company.

The first four-fifths of the journey was ordinarily not a hardship, at least for the men who, relieved of the routine of farm chores, often found it a lark. It was decidedly less so for the women because it was hard to keep house and manage children in a jolting ten-foot box, and there were almost always the clouds of asphyxiating dust kicked up by the vanguard. Then there were the campsites. These could be a pleasant grove of trees by usually well back from the river bottoms to avoid dampness and mosquitoes; this meant for the women long distances over which to haul the water. Then, too, the campsites had often been occupied the night before by a forward party and so could be rankly odoriferous with animal and human feces.
There were other problems as well, shortages of grass for the cattle, raging rivers to cross, sometimes bitter hand-to-hand fighting on the part of the men. Death by drowning and by the accidental discharge of firearms was far from uncommon and killed more of the immigrants than the natives. Indeed it is estimated that between 1840 and 1860 more natives were slaughtered by the immigrants than vice versa.

But there were pleasures too. Despite the fights, there was considerable camaraderie. "This trip finds us together like a band of brothers." Many of the women might have said the same. At night there were prayer meetings to attend or a fiddle to dance to of friends with whom to share a jug. And as 17-year-old Susan Parish wrote, "...Where there are young people together there is always lovemaking."

On the last leg of the journey, however—from Fort Hall in Idaho to the Willamette Valley—the pleasures were few indeed. Now food supplies were low, and both immigrants and animals were exhausted by the long months of the trek. Worst of all lay before them the dreaded Blue Mountains, which, because of the steepness of the grades, could only be crossed with the aid of block and tackle. The immigrants prayed that now in late September the snows of winter would not come early to the mountains.
On finally reaching the valleys of Oregon, the immigrants—53,000 of them between 1840 and 1860—without exception were glad the journey was over.
And what did they find? The geography of the Willamette Valley was the same then as now; roughly 100 miles long, 20 to 30 miles wide, flat green prairie swelling here and there into buttes, oak savannas, streams pouring from both ranges of mountains through slopes of hemlock, spruce, fir and incense cedar to feed the river, which meandered the whole of the valley’s length and gave the place its name. What astonished the immigrants, however, was not so much the valley, about as Edenic as they had expected, but rather something above it, the great white escarpment against the blue of the eastern sky, the mountains.
There were other surprises too, some pleasant, some not. By the mid-1840s the valley was pretty well hunted out, so there was a scarcity of game. Also, the immigrants were disappointed that the wild plum of their native forests did not grow here. More disappointing yet, there were no bee trees filled with honey. On the other hand, hazel nuts abounded as did a variety of berries. The climate, too, was welcome, the temperate winters, the gentle summers, the relative absence of thunder and lightening, but—and a novelty and delight to all—the frequency of rainbows.
This then was the world where the immigrants settled, most typically or anyway most ideally claiming land—the expected 640 acres for a husband and wife—on the prairie margins, close to both timber and the open land. They needed the timber to build their houses and barns, the open land for their animals to graze on and to plant the wheat—shelter and food, the bases of their life.
But these things could take time and the beginnings were difficult. Peter H. Burnett, an immigrant of 1843 and first governor of California, provides us with a picture:

Many of the men immigrants were childish, most of them discouraged, and all of them more or less embarrassed. There was necessarily, under the circumstances, a great hurry to select claims; and the newcomers had to travel over the country in the rainy season in search of homes. Their animals being poor, they found it difficult to get along as fast as they desired. There were no hotels in the country... the old settlers had necessarily to open their doors to the new immigrants... our families were often overworked in waiting upon others and our provisions vanished before the keen appetites of our new guests. They bred famine wherever they went.

No single person aided the immigrants more than did John McLoughlin. Touched by the hardships they had endured, he helped them again and again with money, supplies and good counsel even though his instructions were to discourage settlement. But finally the instructions were adamant: he was to discontinue all assistance. "Gentlemen," it said he replied, "if such is your order I will serve you no longer." And he did not, resigning in 1846 to retire to the town which he had founded in 1829, the first in Oregon, indeed the first to be incorporated in the west, Oregon City.
As mentioned earlier, the wagontrain immigrants were in their makeup remarkably homogeneous. The people among whom they settled were far less so. On the Tualatin Plains lived the "Rocky Mountain Boys," aging American fur trappers, rugged types with Indian slave-wives and children. Across the Columbia in their library were ensconced the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Company with their ruby port and London journals. In the vicinity of Saint Paul, those first settlers, the French-Canadians, remained on. With them now were those two very sharp thorns in the Protestant side, fathers Blanchet and Demers. Upriver at Mission Bottom struggled the Methodists. In the towns lived yet another type—New England merchants, most of whom had arrived with their goods by ship. This was not the only respect in which these New Englanders differed from the wagontrain emigrants who, for the most part, embodied the traditions and attitudes of the Southern small farmer. Finally, there were the vanishing Native Americans. By 1845 the Willamette Valley's 2,000 squatters had outnumbered them. Such then was the diversity with which Oregon began.
There was, however, one common characteristic. Only seven percent of these 2,000 squatters were over the age of 45. In other words, it was a remarkably young community and, like all young communities, was boisterous and thus required restraint, or that is to say laws—particularly laws relating to land title and claim jumping.

That winter before Christmas, Samuel K. Barlow went to the Provisional Government seeking a charter to build a toll road from The Dalles to Oregon City. Much of the Barlow Trail went through heavily timbered areas where many trees had to be removed to get the wagons through the Willamette Valley, and Barlow said he would clear and maintain the road if he could collect tolls. He stated in his petition that

...the cost of making the road is estimated at four thousand dollars in cash (by me alone); all other persons that have seen the route make larger estimates than shown...

The charter was granted in Oregon City on December 18, 1845. George Abernethy, the territorial governor, signed it with authorization for a toll road from January 1846 to January 1848, at the following rates:

For each wagon, five dollars. For each head of horses, mules or asses, whether loose, geared, or saddled, ten cents. For each head of horned cattle, whether geared or loose, ten cents.

The $4,000 estimate was based on costs of $50 a mile, and when Barlow and his partner Philip Foster of Eagle Creek started construction the following spring, Barlow remembered something. He had forgotten bridges across the Zigzag and Sandy rivers. The supplies were bought on credit. By August 1846, the road was ready for travel.

There weren't any bridges until 1853, when Francis J. Revenue, Sandy's first permanent resident, built a bridge downstream from the Sandy River ford at or near the location of the present Sandy River Bridge on Ten Eyck Road. He used his own funds and established Toll Gate No. 2, which he operated from 1853 to 1865. He also started a trading post, and he and his wife Lydia Ann aided and encouraged both settlers and passersby enroute to the Willamette Valley.
Operating a toll gate was not easy, as many emigrants had no money. When they arrived at the toll gate hungry and penniless, the alternatives often were barter: a shirt, a cow, a blanket, or a promise to pay later. The chivalrous Barlow allowed widows to pass toll free.
When Barlow received a commission as a justice of the peace for Clackamas County in 1850, his road had experienced some hard times following the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Barlow gave up the charter, but other men applied and continued to operate the toll road until 1915. It had become a two-way road, with emigrants coming and going. Many took up homesteads in Central and Eastern Oregon after looking over the Willamette Valley first.
In 1859, Oregon became a state and the legislature declared November though May as "Free Passage" months. Legislators also set rates that could be changed, making the investment of the franchise holders, Samuel Barlow and his successors, less valuable.

In 1846, the families of prosperous farmers George and Jacob Donner, furniture manufacturer James Reed, and others, came together in Independence, Missouri, and set out for California on the wagon trails. Their journey would become one of the greatest tragedies of the overland crossings.
The preliminary preparations for organizing the Donner wagontrain took place in Sangamon County, Illinois. Early in April 1846, the party set out from Springfield, Illinois, and by the first week in May reached Independence, Missouri. Here the party was increased by additional members and the train comprised about 100 persons. The members of the original party numbered about 90. Independence was on the frontier in those days, so ample provisions were laid in for the long journey.
The travelers were full of enthusiasm for their long migration and the new lives they would find in California. A new book by Lansford W. Hastings, an unscrupulous land promoter, painted a rosy picture of the journey and of the wondrous lands that awaited on the Pacific Coast.
The Donner Party set out on the Oregon Trail with unrealistic expectations for an easy crossing. They traveled in large, luxurious wagons that were heavy with extra comforts.
It is not certain where the Leabo family joined—many were with the train during a portion of the journey—but for some cause or other became parted from the Donner wagontrain before reaching Donner Lake. Soon after the train left Independence it contained between 200 and 300 wagons, and when in motion was two miles in length!
On July 20, 1846, George Donner was elected captain of the train at Little Sand River. From then on it was known as the Donner party.
The first part of the journey went well. Before reaching Fort Bridger in Wyoming Territory (1868-1890), the train was never seriously molested by the Sioux, but occasionally, while seeming friendly, they would steal trivial articles which struck their fancy. The party rested at the fort from July 28 to 30, 1846.
Around that time Mary Lewis Leabo was tenderizing some meat and a young brave tried to steal it. In that split second his hand got in the way of her knife and she chopped some of his fingers off. The chief was angry and demanded that Mary be given to them! Some members of the Donner party thought they should let her go. The Leabos would not abandon their daughter to such a fate and were ordered to leave the train.
There is another version to this story told by Lillian Lewis Cutsworth of Estacada:

In the year 1846 my great aunt, Mary "Polly" Leabo, left her home in Kentucky and came to Oregon with her husband and children:

The wagontrain made camp on the banks of the Rogue and, as game and fish were plentiful, they spent several days there.
On the evening of which I write, the men were later than usual returning from their hunt. Aunt Polly was busy cooking juicy venison steaks, the children closed around her eagerly waiting for their evening meal.
Out of the dusk a figure appeared. Slowly it walked toward the fire and squatted down beside aunt Polly. He was and Indian and entirely nude.
Nudists colonies with their benefits to health were unheard of in those days. Why, the very thought of "nudity" was intolerable. Polly was angered more than she was scared, but what could she do?
She continued frying her steak, using a large butcher knife to turn it and lift it out of the platter. Every time she would place a steak on the platter, the Indian would reach out and grab the meat and eat it.
Polly finally had had enough! As the Indian reached for the next steak, she brought down the knife across his wrist with all her might. The Indian jumped up howling with pain and disappeared into the forest.
When the men returned and Leabo was told of the incident he said, "Why, Polly? What ever possessed you to do that? He will get his entire tribe and return and massacre all of us."
"Massacre or no massacre," said the little woman, "I'm not going to endure the sight of any 'naked redman.'"
The Indian had evidently learned his lesson, as the whites were not molested and continued their journey on into the valley of the Willamette.

The huge group split up when it reached Fort Bridger in Wyoming Territory (1868-1890), a mere camp or trading post on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. Quarreling and petty differences were fundamental causes for the calamities that befell the Donner party. The Donners and their party of 87 that took the Hastings Cutoff became the ill-fated Donner party, the pioneer martyrs of California who engaged in cannibalism in order to survive the bitter winter. This was a shortcut that Hastings described in his book. He claimed it would cut 400 miles out of the trip, but the route had been tried with ox-drawn wagons, and it turned out to be much more difficult than Hastings suggested.
The rest of the wagons, including the Leabos, went to California via Fort Hall II and reached California in safety. The Leabos eventually left the Humboldt River Trail and came to Oregon on the Applegate Trail.

James R. Leabo, a pioneer of 1846, died or paralysis at Good Samaritan hospital at noon yesterday after an illness of even weeks. During all his sickness he was unconscious and to the last he was unable to recognize those of his family who gathered about his bedside. He was 75 years and 7 days old.
Mr. Leabo was born in Cooke County, Tennessee, August 18, 1823. He came to Oregon in 1846 and served with the volunteers in the Cayuse War. He lived in Yaquina Bay for a year or two and settled in Clackamas County in 1851. He engaged in farming there until 1883, when he moved to Portland. Since then he resided in this city almost continuously.
Mr. Leabo's wife and five children survive him. He married Emily Armina Lee on March 16, 1851 in Oregon City, Clackamas County, Oregon. Emily was born on 22 July 1828 in Jefferson County, New York. She was the daughter of Philander Lee and Anna Harvey Green. Their children are: S.B. Leabo of Astoria; Mrs. A. H. Clift of Kakama; Mrs. R.H. Mast of Bandon; R.L. Leabo; and Mrs. M. Wilson of Portland.
The Funeral will take place tomorrow morning where Mr. Leabo's late residence, 690 Division Street, East side. The pall bears will be members of the Indidan War Verterans and Oregon Pioneer Association of which origination deceased was a member.

"Guy E. Leabo Memorial Gold Mining Museum"
by Mark Baker, The Register Guard
Cottage Grove: Sunday: October 26, 2003

He drove a Greyhound bus during the week, but on weekends, Guy Leabo went mining. A lifelong Cottage Grove resident, Leabo died of cancer March 27 at age 71. But his gold- and silver-hunting comrades won’t soon forget him. In fact, they’ve named the Bohemia Mine Owners Association’s new museum after him. The Guy E. Leabo Memorial Gold Mining Museum held its grand opening Saturday on Main Street in an old storefront. Most of the museum’s items have been donated, said Perry Thiede, the museum director.
“We want to preserve what’s left of our mining history,” he said. “We want to keep it going so everybody can have a look at it and keep the history alive.”
The Bohemia Mining District is 35 miles southeast of town in the Calapooya Mountains and its history goes back to the 1860s when gold prospectors first came to the area. Legend has it that two men, James Johnson and George Ramsey, fled to the area in 1863 after killing an Indian in the Roseburg area. One day, while dressing a deer, Johnson caught a glimpse of gold quartz and the Bohemia Mining District was born.
By 1880, more than 100 claims had been staked at mines with such colorful names as El Capitan, Golden, Slipper, Cripple Creek, Oro Fino, Peek-a-Boo, Quickstep, Holy Smoke, Holy Terror and Tall Timber.
The museum includes old photographs of those mining days, mixed with recent ones; cases of rock minerals; old mining tools; books; and even some gold to buy in little capsules.
Leabo realized his dream of starting a gold mining mill in the mining district’s Crystal Basin about five years ago, said Bruce Stewart, the mining association’s president. And Leabo’s was the last mill to operate in the district, Stewart said. It wasn’t something that made him rich — those days are long gone in the district, Stewart said. It just made him happy.
“Bohemia Mines was his passion,” Stewart said. There he found not only gold, but silver, lead, copper and zinc. The Bohemia Mine Owners Association has about 350 members, Stewart said. And many of them have land claims among the district’s 1,000 acres. But operating a mill and processing gold has become too expensive, although he and some other members of the association still would like to get another mill going.
And getting a permit to use cyanide or other chemicals that dissolve gold and silver from ore is difficult these days because of environmental laws, Stewart said. Instead, members still pan for gold in the district’s creeks or dig it out, he said.
“There’s still lots of gold, it’s just that it’s costly to get it out.”

In 1846 pioneers were anxious to discover a southern pass over the Cascades and blaze a trail. Levi Scott, who led the first expedition, soon turned back to enlist more men. Among the 15 who made the second start were Lindsay and Jesse Applegate. Near this point a party coming up from California had been attacked by Indians and one man had been severely wounded. Proceeding cautiously they crossed the mountains, swung down into northern California, turned eastward to follow the Humboldt of Nevada and then cut up to Fort Hall II on the Oregon Trail. There Jesse Applegate was able to induce some members of the 1846 migration to follow his lead over the new trail; the rest of the party went ahead to clear the road.
Lindsay Applegate later wrote about the road-maker's experiences:

No circumstances worthy of mention occurred on the monotonous march from Black Rock to the timbered regions of the Cascade chain; then our labors became quite arduous. Every day we kept guard over the horses while we worked on the road, and at night we dared not cease our vigilance, for the Indians continually hovered about us, seeking for advantage. By the time we had worked our way through the mountains to the Rogue River Valley, and then through the Grave Creek Hills and Umpqua chain, we were pretty thoroughly worn out. Our stock of provisions had grown very short, and we had to depend to a great extent, for sustenance, on game. Road working, hunting, and guard duty had taxed our strength greatly, and on our arrival at the Umpqua Valley, knowing that the greatest difficulties in the way of immigrants, had been removed, we decided to proceed at once to our home in the Willamette.

At Salt Lake City, the pioneers bound for California soon learned that if they were late crossing the Sierra Nevadas into California they risked being trapped by violent blizzards.
Before long, the Donner party found itself crossing a great salt desert. The harsh landscape took its toll on both people and wagons. Heat and thirst killed many of the cattle brought along for food. Some of the wagons were damaged beyond repair, and whole families had to walk and live without shelter.
The strain and hardship of crossing the desert left the pioneers weak, confused, and angry. Fights and arguments sprung up readily. James Reed was banished from the Donner party after he killed a man in a fight. His family secretly supplied him with food and a gun to help him survive alone in the wilderness.
By the time the Donner party reached the Sierra Mountains in California, the winter snows had begun, and they were trapped until spring. With inadequate shelter and little food, they were now faced with starvation and fierce cold. A