The Way West - John Bartleson

The Way West - John Bartleson

South Pass over the Continental Divide, the path through the Rockies heading west, is a gentle 20-mile saddle easily traversed in season on horseback or by wagon. When fur companies brought supplies by wagon to trappers at their annual rendezvous, it demonstrated dramatically that wheels could make it across the rugged slopes. The attraction of the West was played with increasing intensity across the pages of eastern newspapers reporting the adventures of mountaineers and explorers. The West became an image of wide open spaces, where land was free for the taking, and a person's troubles could be left behind.

Soon the promise of Oregon and a fresh start in new country drew scores of prospective overland travelers to the "Western Emigration Society", organized by Missourians to help immigrants prepare for the journey west.

The way West, beyond the Rockies, was an unclear path to travel. It was thought to head for Oregon by way of South Pass to Fort Hall, the Hudson's Bay Co. trading post, from there west the best way possible.

The first wagon teams gathered at the Kansas River in May of 1841. They were nervous about the journey before them. One headstrong, rather overbearing individual, John Bartleson, insisted on being elected captain and threatened to pull out of the enterprise if he were ignored. It was obvious that "Captain" Bartleson knew little more about Plains travel than the next man, but the immigrants obliged him anyway.

The famous mountaineer Thomas (Broken Hand) Fitzpatrick was guiding a small contingent of Catholic missionaries to Flathead country in present Montana, and the immigrants wisely waited to join them.

On May 18th the company set out, it was with 15 wagons and four solid-wheel Red River carts. Counting the Catholics, there were 66 men, at least five women and a few children.

They made it to Soda Springs in present day Idaho by August. From there the Catholic missionaries, Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre DeSmet among them, continued north to the Flatheads. Bartleson with three others rode to Fort Hall seeking trail information, and 32 of the travelers in nine wagons chose to press on for California, moving slowly until Bartleson could overtake them; the rest of the group chose Oregon.

In the California company was John Bidwell, whose daily journal left a record of their experience. History would recognize him by dubbing the nine wagons the ``Bidwell-Bartleson party.'' They planned to seek out Cache Valley and there await Bartleson.

The company jolted south in the general vicinity of the Bear River, and would by mid-August reach today's Cornish, Cache County, thus becoming the first immigrant wagon party to travel northern Utah.

During the next few weeks, they wandered desperately, reaching present day Smithfield before turning west to what is now Fielding, making a northern loop to cross the Malad River, then veering south again to present Corinne. Here scouts brought word the party was within 10 miles of where the Bear River emptied into the Great Salt Lake.

Bidwell confided dourly in his journal, "This is the fruit of having no pilot -- we pass through cash valley, where we intended to stop and did not know it."

Bartleson and the three who rode to Fort Hall caught up at the campsite now called Connor Springs. The end of August found the party plodding westward just north of the lake, taking wagons where none had been before. Past Locomotive Springs and through Park Valley they struggled. They had no fresh water; their animals had no grass.

On Sept. 6, 1841, Bidwell wrote, "We traveled about 10 miles a day in a southwest direction and camped on a small brook. Today we killed some rabbits and an antelope. Game being scarce here we were compelled to kill oxen.''

A week brought them to yet another milestone in Western annals, as historian Dale L. Morgan described it: "The first immigrant arrival at Pilot Peak." It was costly.

Four years later, John C. Fremont's pack expedition reached this critical watering hole after a venturesome southwestern crossing of the Salt Desert, and in 1846 immigrant companies would stumble here out of the desert as though to salvation itself.

Now a refreshed Bidwell-Bartleson party moved on to the Pequop Range in present Nevada, where, after surviving five months of tortuous trail-breaking travel, the remaining wagons were left behind, guideposts for future immigrants.

It was early November before those hardy pioneers actually reached California. Their achievement stirred the nation's pulse, and before five more years had passed, the move West was on in earnest.

Compiled from an article by Harold Schindler of the Salt Lake Tribune

1. The "Western Immigration Society" ____ .

welcomed people to the West
traded mules for guns
helped organize wagon trains headed West
was a group of veteran mountain men

2. The first wagon trains gathered by the Kansas river in ____ .

1830
1842
1841
1835

3. Which word best describes John Bartleson?

meek
overbearing
nervous
reserved

4. Who was the famous mountainman that accompanied the Bartleson party?

Thomas Fitzpatrick
Jim Bridger
John Bartleson
Kit Carson

5. The Bidwell-Bartleson party abandoned their wagons in ____ .

Arizona
Utah
California
Nevada

Your score is out of 5.