Come Quickly, Leave Quickly

The thing is, people didn't move to the West, the pioneers moved "in" the West.  The Westward movement was made of people who were often vague and unsure of their purpose, sometimes ambitious, but more uncertain of where that ambition should be rooted.  Americans were a new kind of migrants.  They didn't have a set destination. They valued the freedom to move, always looking to discover their purpose, to seek something new.  Going West wasn't a destination, it was a journey.

Communities moved for many reasons - the lack of rain, lost opportunities,  Indian attacks, railroad tracks that never came, restlessness and exhausted mines.  Many of the ghost towns were just played out resources.  The farming towns moved on more gradually.  When the soil was too dry, or too wet, when they had to struggle too hard to grow crops, they moved on.  These towns were quickly settled and quickly abandoned like the mining towns.  The difference is the miners left everything behind to find a rich new resource.  The farming communities took it with them.  Both left the shell of a community behind them and took the spirit with them.

Ghost towns like those encountered in the Great Plains were of another sort entirely.  They gradually declined until they completely disappeared.  Sometimes they would remain partially inhabited as crossroad settlements or small villages for a period of time before disappearing entirely.  The abandoned buildings would be dismantled for the lumber which was scarce and worth too much money and labor to leave behind, 

When the town of Nininger, Minnesota went into decline, much of the town was physically dismantled and moved to another location.  The machinery of the sawmill itself was sold in pieces in 1860.  The Handyside Home, a hotel for 50 guests, was taken to the neighboring town of Hastings.  The Masonic Lodge purchased Tremont Hill and moved it to Cottage Grove.   Then the town of Cottage Grove, which had went from a population of 500 in 1837 to 1000 in 1858, would decline in just eight years to 469 by the 1860s.  By  1869 none of the original buildings remained,  the entire village had disappeared.  

Many towns like Newport, Wisconsin on the banks of the Wisconsin River began to decline for nothing more than the railroad was built on the other side of the river. The town had expected to be a railroad hub but a change in location meant that the last log house was taken down the river in 1880 long after the town itself lay abandoned.  

These "Bedouins of America" survived any number of trans-plantings.  Could they have survived if they had stayed in the exhausted mining towns, on the drought-ridden farms, the towns the railroad forgot?  We don't know,  but we do know they didn't want to just survive, they wanted to prosper.  It wasn't enough to move if they didn't see it being prosperous.  The West had a pattern - come quickly, and if it wasn't what was expected - to leave just as quickly.

Next time...Getting around the West

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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 24,  1873, William Henry Jackson became the first person to photograph Colorado's Mount of the Holy Cross, providing proof that it existed. It had been rumored that a natural cross of snow lay hidden in the mountains of Colorado.  Jackson had photographed Yellowstone and many wagon trains earlier in his career.  His photo, with the early morning sun shining over it became one of his most famous photos.  

Ghost Towns

The Western landscape by nature reflected the moving on spirit. The remains of wagon train settlements were abandoned by those looking for a fresh start. A nearly empty continent with fast moving families  left behind the abandoned places we know as ghost towns - places left before they were used up.

in Iowa, for example a list from 1930 of towns, villages, even post offices that had been abandoned since 1838 were 2,205 ghost towns.   This list did not count towns and villages that become parts of other places, nor name changes. or those never built up.  These were actually abandoned places where people had once lived. Mail was delivered there.   Houses were built.   Hopes and dreams were lived out before the people moved on. The time frame for this list only concerned places abandoned between 1852-1912 -  a period of 60 years.  A comparable list of Kansas abandoned towns is over 2,500 considered ghost towns.

The western settlers moved on because they had more need, more temptation and more opportunity to do so. They had no roots and no time to make roots. The uncertain America from as far back as the first
settlement of Jamestown was one of the first ghost towns. Founded in 1607, it had the first legislative assembly in 1619 and was actually the capital of Virginia until 1698. By 1722 a visitor noted that
"nothing but abundance of brick rubble and three or four inhabited homes" remained of Jamestown.

Like the West, our capital was mobile and the eastern states capitals as well. By 1812 eight of the original 13 states had different capital cities than they had in 1776.  Most of these new capitals were moved once the new capitals had gained enough population.  Many were were settled for that specific purpose. New Hampshire's capital moved from Portsmouth to Concord (1808). New York City to Albany (1797), Princeton, New Jersey to Trenton (1790) with Pennsylvania, Delaware,  North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia all following suit. These were the signs of rapid population growth in America's early days

 

Unlike the western territories, these capitals did not become ghost towns, just cities of lesser importance.  The western territories however went about their capitals a bit differently…

Next time- The Western Capitals

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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 17, 1862, Minnesota erupts in violence as desperate Dakota Indians attack white settlements along the Minnesota River. The Dakota were eventually overwhelmed by the U.S. military six weeks later. The Dakota Indians were more commonly referred to as the Sioux, a derogatory name derived from part of a French word meaning “little snake.”

No Place for a Lady

 This movable society of settlers going west had guidelines for moving...supplies that should be left behind, like elegant clothing, heavily carved furniture, or a silver service - which were plainly not practicable on the trail going west.  All possessions were to be secure, compact and portable.  Space and weight had to be conserved for food, water, shelter, ammunition and tools.  There were actually guidebooks to explain how to pack your wagon!

One thing commonly left behind in the beginning of the land rush west was women.  The mining camps were notoriously male.  In the spring of 1849 in all of San Francisco, it is said that women numbered only 15.  Every camp had its share of prostitutes, but tough, bearded, weather-beaten men would stand on the street for hours just to have the sight of a real lady or a child.  Often men would travel miles to welcome the first "homemade lady" to camp. And let's face it, mining camps were not the ideal place to raise a family!

The scarcity of women  lowered the morality and made life rougher, but it had some advantages as well.  When women did come later, they brought their morality along with their inequality.  The making of social distinctions was women's work.  "Putting on style" wrote one Montana reporter, "is the detestation of everybody.  It is neither forgiven nor forgotten and kills a man like bullets."  In these movable towns, people seems more equal than men and women do otherwise, not because of a creed, but because of their way of life. 

Women were, however, moving west.  The women who moved in the wagon trains were probably not as interested in "putting on style" as their counterparts back East.  They were interested in survival, in feeding their families and keeping their children safe from the perils of the trail.  These were not your society conscious women - they were rugged and hearty and helped make the frontier what it was - a place for people to find a new life and a new way of living.  

Women became the organizers of schools and churches in the new settlements.  They brought order to the West and a bit of civilization.  Without women, the West would not have been a place for families. Many became honest businesswomen - cooking for the men, sewing clothes and keeping the place "respectable."  Men may not have wanted respectable, but without it the West would have remained just one abandoned town after another.  We will look at that next time.

 

Next time...Ghost towns

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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 13, 1878, Kate Bionda, a restaurant owner in Memphis, Tennessee, because the first to die of yellow fever in the epidemic that spread through America from a steamboat passenger.  Yellow fever, carried by mosquitoes, gets it name from the jaundice that usually accompanies the disease.  The cause was not known in the 19th century and spread to New York, New Orleans and Philadelphia and killed thousands of people over several outbreak years.

No Johnny-Come-Latelys

These ruling "Association Clubs" in the western settlements were not always democratic.  The honest settler didn't always win against the scheming speculator.  They acted not only to protect the squatters title to the land they lived on and farmed, but also helped to gain second and third claims against later settlers.  

A better name for these "Settler's Associations" would have been "First-Arrival Associations."  They protected the first settlers against anyone else.  The non-resident speculator rarely made any money as unimproved land by absentee owners was exploited, sometimes it was simply seized.  Other times taxes was levied on it for local improvements such as schools or roads without the land owner's knowledge, thus forcing the land owner to sell the unoccupied land for taxes.  

The Association law stood for the "Priority Principle" which meant that those who arrived first were the priority.  The rules that existed before the formal government were the superior law.  The principle helped to show that the Johnny-come-lately, the laggard, the slow starter, had no place on the new frontier.  They were the weak, and weak men would not do in the West.

The priority principle was at first about the emptiness and newness of America.  It was first about the law of the land, but it would come to be applied to the race for America's treasures - for gold and silver, for water, for grasslands, for oil.

Next time....Law in the Treasure Towns

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Today in Pioneer History: "On July 2, 1809, Chief Tecumseh, chief of the Shawnee tribe, urges his people of the Old Northwest and Deep South to unite and resist the the white settlers  squatting on their lands.  Together he said the tribes were strong enough to stop the whites from taking further land.  A year later he organized the Ohio Valley Confederacy and for several years he was successful in delaying further white settlement in the land.  

Who Owns My Land?

The Federal government's land surveys lagged behind the settling of the Western lands.  The settlers had little or no patience with Federal bureaucracy assigning lands.  Only gradually did Federal laws begin to take into account the needs and life of the new residents out West.

One of those who championed the rights and interest of the settlers was Thomas Hart Benton during his 30 years in the Senate, 1821-1851.  He argued for a fixed minimum price for all Western lands, and urged that the price be based on the quality of the land.  Benton secured changes in the laws to protect the settlers who had cultivated land on public domain without prior formalities.  The law was slowly changed to save the "squatters" rights.

Even so, these changes were incredibly slow to materialize.  In 1830, but not made permanent until 1841, the settlers was give some temporary legal protection against purchase by a non-resident.  Now a settlers had the first bid on a tract of land up to 160 acres at minimum price, but acreage over 160 acres usually went up for public auction.

The Homestead Act of 1862 enabled a settler to secure Federal title of 160 acres free of any charge except the registration fee.  The settler had to have lived continuously on the land for five years at the time of application.  By that time though most of the best land had been settled and a Western lifestyle established.

Next time...Protection Unions

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 18, 1983,  Dr. Sally Ride becomes the American women in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger on its second mission.  

This Land in My Land

Traveling back in time to a wide open West.  Before the Gold Rush.  A nearly empty continent west of the Allegheny Mountains.  The Great Land Rush of the 19th century in America.  When there was no government rule, just land for the taking.  Or was there?

The western public lands were technically under the control of the Federal government headquartered in the East.  The belief was that you could not deal with land at a distance without an accurate definition of what you were dealing with.  This led to surveying the lands into rectangle townships - each six miles square with 36 sections, each a mile square of 640 acres.  The sale of these large tracts of land to those in the East with money seemed the simplest and most orderly way of settling the West.  Beginning with Ohio in 1803 (the first public land state) the government kept the title to all ungranted land with the exception of that for education.  Nice and orderly...

That's not how it actually happened though...the first settlers, called "squatters" were those that got there first and they didn't wait for any laws or deeds to tell them they owned the land.  They cared less and knew even less what the government said.  To have waited for protection by law would have been to lose all the advantages of being there first.  So they made their own laws.

These settlers came without proper documentation, nor the intention of adhering to any program or surveys.  They stopped here, they stopped there, according to how the land looked, how the wagon was faring, if the oxen were tired.  More times than not they didn't stay put and moved on - not really knowing where their final destination was, but hoping for the best land.  However orderly and neat might the Federal plan be, the settlement of the West was anything but that - nearly all westward movement in America in the 19th century was a land rush.

Next time...building a system of laws.

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 15, 1846, the Oregon Treaty is signed between the US and Great Britain, establishing the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Georgia as the boundary between the United States and British Canada.  The United States gained control of the Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana while the British retained Vancouver Island and navigation rights to part of the Columbia River. 

Moutain Men Move West

For the next few posts we are going to look back at somewhere we have already been in this blog - the early mountain men and fur trappers.  We took an extensive trip across the life of Joseph Walker a while back that you can search the blog for if you want an eye-witness account of that kind of life.  Here I am just including a bit because it fits chronologically in the development of the West...

The lucrative fur trade was always a part of the trappers story.  Loving the wilderness, leaving the life of the town and the farm, these hunters/trappers were known as "mountain men".   These rugged men learned Indian ways, had expert survival skills and were extremely tough.  Their days of glory lasted a little more that two decades, but their legend is a permanent part of the history of the American West and the pioneer.

As the pioneer settlers came, the mountain men moved on further west.  They were always two steps ahead of civilization.  They weren't looking for gold, or for land, but for an animal.  At the time it was beaver fur that was fashionable.  The pelts (called "heavy bank notes") were worn as coats and hats in Europe and America.  There was a time when American rivers swarmed with beaver, but money from the beaver pelts made fortunes.  So no one took notice for 20 years, as the beaver was slaughtered to the point that there was none to hunt - and the trappers livelihood ended.

Next time...How it all started.
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Today in Pioneer History: "On March 10, 1864, local hell-raiser Jack Slade is hanged in one of the more troubling incidents of frontier vigilantism in Montana. Slade stood out even among the many rabble-rousers who inhabited the wild frontier-mining town of Virginia City, Montana. When he was sober, townspeople liked and respected Slade, when drunk, however, Slade had a habit of firing his guns in bars and making idle threats. Finally fed up with his drunken rampages and wild threats, a group of vigilantes took Slade into custody. Slade, who had committed no serious crime in Virginia City, was hanged.

The Year of Indian Violence

Captain Joe Walker no doubt knew about his brother, Joel's plans and travels.  He had many friends and contacts who would have updated him about his brother.  During this time Joe returned from California, stopped to pick up his wife, rest his horses and then set off for Missouri.  Stopping on the present day Wyoming-Colorado-Nebraska border to make buffalo jerky.

The summer of 1841 was a violent one where Indians were concerned. The Cheyenne attacked a wagon train.  The Sioux harassed a party of traders and attacked a settlement in Iowa where they took 14 Delaware scalps.  A band of Osage returning to Missouri from a hunting and fishing trip in Texas, brought back 2 white women as captives that they have purchased from the Comanche.

The white man and Indian relationship was changing - and next time we look at the two eras of their relationship.

You Snooze, You Lose

At North Platte the expedition met 60 Crows who had been chasing Cheyennes.  Bonneville partied with the Crows and thought they were most hospitable and friendly until he found out they had robbed him of his knives, wallet - even his coat buttons.  Poor naive Ben...

By July of 1832 they were at the Sweetwater River and the Shining Mountains (the Rockies) were in view.  They became the first substantial wagon train to go through the South Pass - which in 10 years would be the Gateway to the Pacific.

The party continued to the Green River, a northern branch of the Colorado and camped at Horseshoe Creek in Wyoming. 

 Next time...before we go further some background on the Fur Trading Companies of the 1830s.

Three's a Charm

When we last left Captain Joseph Walker, he was looking for an expedition party to explore the unknown parts of the West...Benjamin Bonneville was looking for a man who could lead him through the Rockies and recruit and manage a team of fur trappers. Soon to join Walker and Bonneville on the expedition was Michael Cerre, of old St. Louis mercantile heritage. He had the experience in business that Walker and Bonneville needed. 

Bonneville went back to John Jacob Astor in 1832 for money to finance the expedition.  Cerre went to St. Louis for supplies and Walker went to Fort Osage for men.  Captain Walker hired Delaware Indians who had relocated from the Appalachians and who hired out to the British and American fur traders.  They were expert trappers as well as hired guns, so they had the wilderness skills and aggressiveness, but were hated by the native tribes of the West. 

Walker made an excellent choice....

Next time...White Plume