Helen Carpenter - Young Author

In later years Helen Carpenter was a magazine and book author, but in 1857 she was a young bride of four months when she and her husband made the crossing to the west.

Helen was a fashion critic in her early journals, commenting on another bride's choice of a hoop skirt as fashion attire on the trail..."the bride wears hoops - we have read of hoops being worn, but they had not reached Kansas before we left.  Would not recommend them for this mode of traveling - the wearer has less personal privacy than the Pawnee and his blanket."

Helen wrote of subjects other than daily survival as she noted that the wagon party discovered their fire had been built upon a grave site, but they did not trouble to move it.  She wondered whether this callousness bred of the open road  would permanently change their natures.

She worried about Indian as well as did most settlers traveling west during this time.  She recorded one incident in August of 1857...

"When the sun was just peeping over the top of the mountains, there was suddenly heard a shot and a blood curdling yell, and immediately the Indians we saw yesterday were seen riding at full speed directly toward the horses.  Father put his gun to his shoulder as though to shoot.  The Indians kept circling and halooing, bullets cae whizzing through camp.  None can know the honor of it who have not been similarly toward us, but all the time in a circular way, from one side of the road to the other, each time they passed, getting a little nearer, and occasionally firing a shot.  Father and Reel could stand it no longer, they must let those Indians see how far their Sharpe rifles would carry.  Without aiming to hit them, they made the earth fly." 

Next time...Helen's journal records more of her journey to California