A Businessman He Wasn't

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, Daniel Boone was instrumental in organizing the defense of Kentucky's scattered settlements.  In 1778, he was captured by a band of Shawnee while
exploring salt at Blue Lick.  He persuaded the Indians to hold him and his men as hostages to postpone their planned raid on Boonesborough, thus saving defenseless women and children.


Boone was adopted into the Shawnee tribe and taken north of the Ohio River.  While pretending enthusiasm for the tribe, he squirreled away guns, ammunition and dried meat.  Waiting for the right moment, he slipped away, arriving in Boonesborough in time to defend it against a large Indian force sent by the British.

By the end of the Revolution, Boone owned title to 10,000 acres.  Much of it was lost to improper registration, the rest went to satisfy claims of creditors.  The legend, you see, was a very poor businessman.

In 1788 he left Kentucky and in 1799 he settled in Missouri where he was appointed district magistrate by the Spanish.  Once again, he was rewarded with a huge chunk of land and once again he lost it when the Louisiana Purchase became part of the US in 1803. 

Boone remained active and hardy, hunting and trapping well into his 80s.  Near the end of his life, he returned to Kentucky to pay off the last of his creditors..  He died in Missouri in 1820.  His body was later returned to Kentucky in 1845 and buried with full honors.

Next time...another Kentucky Legend
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Today in Pioneer History: On September 24, 1789, the Judiciary Act of 1789 is passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six justices who were to serve on the court until death or retirement.

The Man of Legend

Famed as a hunter, wilderness explorer, Indian fighter, surveyor, negotiator, strategist, state legislator, magistrate and land speculator, folk tradition has attributed countless mythical feats to Daniel Boone.
The facts are remarkable enough...

Born November 2, 1734 to Quaker parents on a frontier farm near present day Reading, Pennsylvania, Daniel learned to read and write legibly, but never mastered grammar nor spelling.  In the woods, however, he was a master.  Indians taught Boone the art of spotting and tracking game and how to live in the wilderness. 

Boone stood 5'9", but he had an unusual strength, agility and presence of mind.  Although not the first white man in Kentucky, he was the foremost explorer.  In 1769 he explored most of central and eastern Kentucky.  In 1775 he negotiated a huge tract of land from the Cherokee along with a North Carolina land speculator, Judge Richard Henderson. 

With a company of 30 ax men, Boone cleared the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River and founded Boonesborough at the end of the road.

In 1776, the Indians captured Boone's daughter, Jemima, and two of her companions while they were boating on the Kentucky River.  Boone and a small party followed a trail of broken twigs and cloth the girls had left behind (taught no doubt by Boone), and rescued all safely. 

Boone wrote of his trip to Kentucky in 1769:
"In the midst of dangers and inconveniences, it was impossible to be melancholy.  Nothing could afford such pleasure in my mind as the beauties of nature I found here...a second paradise."

Next time...the Legend Part 2
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Today in Pioneer History: On September 21, 1779,  the Louisiana governor and Spanish military officer Bernardo de Galvez, with the aide of American troops and militia volunteers, captures the British post and garrison at Baton Rouge, located in what was then British-controlled West Florida.

Leaving Legacies without Journals

Susan Wilson, a slave, came to California by a team across the Plains along with her three children.

Addie Stanley came with her parents from Illinois to California in 1852.

Cloye Burnett Logan-Flood came to the Pacific Coast as a slave with a white family in 1853.  When she was 11, she took a horse and rode from Oregon to Shasta, California alone.  As a Californian, she married and raised six children.

These a just a few of the female black pioneers who came to California in the 1800s where they opened schools and churches.  Although these women did not leave journals to tell of their journeys (many probably could not write) there is evidence that they strove to make the West a more hospitable place to raise their families.

Next time we will conclude our look at pioneer journals with some final thought from women's journals.

Have a safe and happy 4th of July weekend!

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Today in Pioneer History:   On July 1, 1887, Clay Allison, eccentric gunfighter and rancher  died while driving a freight wagon to his ranch north of Pecos, Texas. A sudden jolt threw Allison from the wagon and a wheel rolled over his head, crushing his skull and neck. In 1975, Allison’s remains were moved to a grave in downtown Pecos where a granite headstone made the questionable assertion that he was a “Gentleman and Gunfighter” who “never killed a man that did not need killing.”

Biddy Mason - Business Legacy

Not all black pioneers were prosperous, but they were enterprising.  Take Biddy Mason for example.  Biddy was born a slave who trudged from Mississippi to California driving sheep behind 300 wagons belonging to her master's train in 1851. 

Upon arrival, Biddy prevailed upon the sheriff of Los Angeles County to issue a writ preventing her master from taking his slaves out of state  and she finally secured her freedom through the courts in 1856.

Biddy was a shrewd business woman.  She began to purchase property in 1866.  Her original investment was only $250, but she kept purchasing bits and pieces until 30 years later, her heirs were presented with an offer to purchase a portion of her land for $200,000 - which they refused to accept. 

In the 1880s Biddy paid grocery bills for black families who had been left destitute.  She is just one example of those brave pioneers who took an opportunity and left a legacy.

Next time...Susan Wilson

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On this Day in Pioneer History:
On June 24, 1864, Colorado Governor John Evans warns that all peaceful Indians in the region must report to the Sand Creek reservation or risk being attacked, creating the conditions that will lead to the infamous Sand Creek Massacre.

Clara Brown - Independent Business Woman

Clara Brown took in washing at Horshoe Bar, Miner's Ravine, Colorado. It wasn't that she was a washer woman...it was what she did with that that history remembers her for.

 Born in Virginia in 1803, Clara and her mother were sold to a man heading West.  Several owners later, she purchased her freedom and made her way to St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1859 Clara persuaded a part of gold prospectors to hire her as their cook.  At the age of 59, she rode on the back seat of a covered wagon, making her way across the plains.  She arrived in Central City, Colorado and began her laundry business.  In 1860 she moved to Mountain City, 40 miles away,  and paid a prospector to drive her there as his hired help.

After the Civil War, Clara searched for her family, people she had not seen in 60 years.  She found 34 relatives and brought them all by steamboat and wagon, which she bought and outfitted herself, across country to Denver...all on her laundry money.

In later years, she sponsored other wagon trains, helping other blacks to come West...financed only by her own "laundry money."

Next Time...Biddy Mason

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This Day in Pioneer History:  On June 22, 1876, embittered and impoverished, the once mighty Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna dies in Mexico City.

Mary Ellen Pleasants and the Beginning of Civil Rights in California

Many of the black women who came to the western frontier are left anonymous to us.  Margaret Frank wrote in her journal somewhere in the Humboldt Sink she saw "a Negro woman tramping along through the heat and dust carrying a cast iron bake stove on her head with her provisions and a blanket piled on top...bravely pushing for California."

Although this woman's name is lost to history, through her we can see and feel her determination to reach a new life, depending on no one but herself, and overcoming the obstacles so she could make a new life for herself and her family.

Some of the black pioneer women we do know about.  Mary Ellen Pleasants came to San Francisco in 1849.  Born a slave in Georgia, she was married to a free black man in Boston and came west with a sizeable fortune.  In 1858, she traveled all the way back to eastern Canada in order to deliver $30,000 personally to John Brown to help his crusade to free her people.

Upon returning to California, she was taken off a San Francisco streetcar.  She filed suit and along with other black women, eventually compelled streetcar lines to allow Negroes to ride.  100 years before Rosa Parks...

Mary became know as "Mammy" Pleasants, the "Mother of Civil Rights in California".

Next Time...Clara Brown

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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On June 18, 1847, Alexander Murray, an experienced fur trader and wilderness explorer,  leads a heavily armed party into the Yukon River region of North America, to build a fort for trading furs with the local Indians.

The Integration of the West

When California outlawed slavery in 1850 within it boundaries, the gold mines became places where a mixture of races and nationalities came together in search of wealth. 

Mary Ballou wrote home that she lived in a mining camp called "Negro Bar" where French, Dutch, Scotch, Jews, Italians, Swedes, Chinese, and Indians were all panning for gold.  Some of the women who worked in the mining camps had comes as slaves, sold by their masters to families headed West.

Even before the discovery of gold, California had been settled by men and women of Mexican,

Indian, and African descent.  According to the 1790 census, 18% of the population were of something other than Anglo-American origin.  By 1849, San Francisco had its own "mutual Benefit and Relief Society" of Afro-Americans.  By 1854, the city had three black churches and within 10 years, three black newspapers as well.

Oregon, on the other hand, was less hospitable to blacks than many who came West had hoped.  The territory passed laws prohibiting admission to black settlers in general.   In 1857 when Oregon became a state, the Free Negro Admission Article proposed for the state constitution, was defeated and the small number of blacks who had made their way to Oregon lived uneasily until the Emancipation Proclamation six years later.

Next time...we'll look at individual Afro-American pioneers who shaped our western civilization.
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Today in Pioneer History:  On June 16, 1884, the first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York. Known as a switchback railway, it was the brainchild of LaMarcus Thompson, traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride.

Making a Living in the West - Woman's Style

In the hills of Idaho and Colorado were two women who came to the mining camps where men were digging for gold and silver. Contrary to what tales came out of the Wild West, not all women were notorious...

Mrs. Theodore Schultz was the first white woman in the mining camp.  She started a boarding house
and charge $3.00 per meal.  On Sundays, she writes, "I often got 200 extra men.  I worked 18 hours a day.  We had little provisions but bushels of gold dust.  I had gold dust everywhere, in everything, I threw it on the wood box, under the beds..." 

Mrs. Fowler ran a boarding house in Pueblo, Colorado.  She only charged $1.00 a meal and had all the men she could cook for.  Space was at such a premium that men paid for the privilege of sleeping on the ground outside the boarding house.

For women who provided a semblance of home with a warm meal and a clean bed, there were fortunes to be made in the mining camps.  These were just two examples...

Next - Afro-American pioneers

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Today in Pioneer History:  On June 4, 1876,  the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco, a mere 83 hours after leaving New York City,

How'd You Get Here?

By 1863 there were new ways to travel the overland trail to the West. 

Hallie Riley Hodder and her sister rode to Atchison, Kansas, on a "steam car".From there it was 700
miles to Denver, Colorado by stagecoach.  Hallie notes in her journal,

"We changed horses every 10 miles at the little stations on the way, and riding nights as well as days, we made 100 miles in 24 hours, reaching Denver on the evening of the 7th day."

Hallie spent a year and a half in Colorado and then returned back to the East. She notes an interesting observation in her journal after leaving Denver...

"Before leaving a cousin provided me with a new small revolver, and had taught me how to use it.  It was loaded and I took it out of the holster at my belt, so I presume I was ready to use it on myself if we were ever captured by Indians." Researching I found  travelers would rather have committed suicide it seems than  be taken prisoner by the Indians.  Interesting...

Next Time...West by Rails
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  "On May 11, 1896, Mari Sandoz, the author of several histories that demonstrated sympathy for Indians that was unusual for the time, is born in Sheridan County, Nebraska.

The Porters - A Lesson in Manual Labor

Lavina Porter, wife of almost 20 and married for five years, was traveling with her husband toward

Pike's Peak and the hunt for gold in the 1860s.  Lavina had been raised as a southern belle and Mr. Porter was totally unfamiliar with manual labor.

"I've learned how to make a delicate cake or a fancy pudding but never before had I tried to cook a meal."

The trail was an education for both Mr. and Mrs. Porter.  Lavina sewed maternity gowns from a blue gingham cover off her feather bed, and another from a flowered dressing gown that her husband considered "too effiminate".

"We passed hundred of new made graves in this part of our route.  One day we overtook a belated team on its way to one of the distant forts with only a man and his wife.  The wife was quite ill in the little tent, having giving birth only one day.  The father put it in a rude box and laid it in a tiny grave by the wayside.  The poor mother was grieving her heart out at leaving it behind in the lonely plain with only a rude stone to mark its resting place."

The Porters brought no medicine with them so when dysentery struck them, Lavina wrote that she told her husband to "take me out and make my bed in the sand and let me die in peace."  Advised by another traveler to give her a big dose of castor oil, her husband, not having castor oil, administered hair tonic instead...and it worked!

"I would state here that the Sioux Indians were the finest looking warriors we had seen.  The braves were mostly naked and with one wearing a discarded hoop skirt.!"

Youth and a life of pampering did not prepare either Lavina or her husband for the pioneer life they sought but they survived - their child was born in California.

Next time...changes in the Overland Trail
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Today in Pioneer History:  On April 13, 1866, Butch Cassidy, the last of the great western train-robbers, is born on this day in Beaver, Utah Territory.

Catherine Bell - A Representative Woman on the Trail

Catherine and her husband had married in South Norwalk, CT before they migrated  to Iowa and then joined the overland journey to California.  Catherine was carrying her first child, born in August on the shores of the Humboldt River.  Considering her advanced condition, her journal is uplifting:

"It is very muddy and you had better believe it...I had to get out and squat around in the mud to cook out of doors.  But I soon got used to it and it was only fun for me."  (FUN? Seriously?!)

Catherine and her husband traveled with 17 wagons, 59 men, 8 women and 20 children.  They
traveled with no threat of Indian interference, as she noted.

"I didn't feel afraid of them.  I could lay down in the wagon nights and sleep as well as I could in a house."

From California she wrote, "On the bed lies my little back headed boy nestling about trying to make me put away my writing and take him up.  Charles and myself are both very healthy.  I am as fat as a bear." 

Women who were expecting a child were not put aside as their Victorian successors would be, pampered and thought to "delicate" to participate in most of daily chores.  That's for sure! Another sign of how hardly our ancestors really were.

Next time - Music on the Trail

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On this Day in Pioneer History: On April 6, 1832, the Sauk warrior Black Hawk is drawn into war with the United States,  determined to resist the growing presence of Anglo settlers on traditional tribal lands.

Preparing to "Go West Young Man (or Woman)

So why would a family leave their home for the arduous journey into the unknown? 
One of the main reasons is the economic depression of 1839 when wages for the common man took a 50% decrease, banks closed, and grain was worthless.  Another reason was farmers in the Mississippi Valley and the Plain states began to feel "crowded" when there was a mere 12 miles between neighbors.  To us today, that is wilderness living but to the early American farmer that was too close for comfort.

"Oregon Societies" were formed in towns along the Mississippi Valley.  Members pledged to make the westward journey together.  These societies relied on the journals of traders, trappers, missionaries, travelers, government reports and guidebooks of the early 1830's to make their decision.  One traveler who have gone to Oregon in 1834 wrote: "The soil...is rich beyond comparison...The epidemic of the Midwest country, fever and argue, is scarcely known here...the willament valley is a terrestrial paradise." 

As we have discovered, the westward migration was a family affair.  One young girl wrote: 

"One Saturday morning father said that he was going to hear Mr. Burnett talk about Oregon.  Mr. Burnett hauled a box out to the sidewalk, took his stand upon it and began to tell us about the land flowing with milk and honey on the shores of the Pacific.  He told of the great crops of wheat which it was possible to raise in Oregon and pictured in glowing terms the richness of the soil and the attractions of the climate, and then with a little twinkle in his eye he said  'they do say gentlemen, they do say, that out in Oregon the pigs are running about under the great acorn trees, round a fat, and already cooked with knives and forks sticking in them so you can cut off a slice whenever you are hungry'  Father was so moved by what he heard that he decided to join the company that was going west to Oregon.  Father was the first to sign his name." 

Once the decision was made to journey west, a wagon had to be built, supplies purchased, houses sold and possession secured. 

Next time...Let's build a wagon!

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Today in Pioneer History:  On June 4, 1876,  a mere 83 hours after leaving New York City, the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco.  That any human being could travel across the entire nation in less than four days was inconceivable to previous generations of Americans. when it had taken Thomas Jefferson 10 days to travel from his home to Philadelphia via carriage. 

Rules of the Road

In June 1840 Joseph Walker was carving his name into Independence Rock, the first of 1000s of settlers who

would do the same, making the natural tower the "Gateway to the Rockies".  Later that month he met up with some of his brother, Joe's men who led them further into Oregon, being the first to go beyond Boise and entering the Columbia Plateau.

Somewhere in that region they ran into Indian trouble because the Walker children remembered their mothers leading them to the river to hide.  Joel then composed a formal set of safety rules for settlers traveling to the Northwest:

1.  Be careful never to camp in timber.
2.  Be careful never to let Indians come among you.
3.  Never let Indians have any ammunition on any account.
4.  Keep careful watch day and night.
5.  Never neglect camp - guard at any account.
6.  Never fire a gun after crossing the Umqua Mountains until you cross the Siskiew Mountain perhaps a 5 day travel..
7.  Keep  yourselves as close as possible  in traveling through the brush.
8.  Never scatter after game or make any division.
9.  Keep your guns in the best firing conditions.

Next time...19th Century Pharisees

A Melting Pot of Pioneers

The West in the early 1800s actually consisted of the Wilderness Trail - through Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana. By the 1860s and 1870s the West referred to Kansas, Oklahoma, California and Oregon, to name a few.

Many folks when thinking of the pioneers in our American History think of the "Little House" stereotypical family and community, but if you look further you'll find that many of those hardy, tough frontier people were Women, Blacks, Hispanics and Chinese.

This "melting pot" of settlers had in common a bitter battle with the environment and each other. Most of their lives were actually not devoted to fighting with Native Americans over land, or even a dealing with a great crop disaster - they led ordinary lives. They devoted their days to farming, mining, ranching, trapping and trading, and church.

One of the funniest commercials on TV is a couple on a covered wagon - he complaining about her 50 wagons of shoes and suggesting they use Public Storage next time. This is a great favorite because I too love shoes :) and second because it shows humor associated with the frontier life. We often times think of the sepia photos of their hard faces and conclude that these people were anything but happy. But they enjoyed life! They loved adventure and took wagons full of their possessions, suffering long journeys to find that adventure and new life.

I often think of what it must have been like for a child whose parents came in one day and said "pack up your bed, we are moving west" with no idea what was ahead of them but setting out with everything they could carry, including the family's milking cow and working oxen. What fun to have been a child on that adventure!

On the other hand, I imagine how I would do day-to-day tasks without those inventions that we have come to take for granted. Milking a cow at 6 am, churning the butter and baking the bread everyday would make me appreciate my daily bread a whole lot more!

Check out the short poll on the side - what modern convenience would you be most unwilling to live without?

Since we started on the wagon train today, one of the most popular meal for traveling was beans. And with only an open campfire to cook on, soup was easy and kept well for the next meal.

Here is a basic pioneer bean soup recipes circa 1863.

Bean Soup
1/2 pound uncooked navy beans
3/4 pound of ham shank or fat back/salt pork
1 cup diced potatoes uncooked
3/4 cup diced onion
Salt and Pepper, Parsley
Optional if available: 3 tomatoes, skinned and finely chopped

Cover beans with cold water and soak overnight. Rinse beans, cover with fresh water and cook until tender and then strain. Cover the meat with cold water and simmer until tender, skimming off any fat. Add the beans, potatoes and onion to the meat and simmer gently. When the vegetables are almost tender, add the tomatoes (if using them), salt, pepper and parsley. Cook slowly until the vegetables are ready. Serve immediately - tastes better the second day.
Serves 6.

If you have comments about the diversity of pioneers or the Westward journey from a child's perspective, please post below. I will explore more in the next week or so about the diversity of pioneers.

Have a great day!