Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail Part 23

There was no other way to find Jim than to offer a reward. I did this, and feel sure I paid twenty dollars to one of the parties to the theft.

The fellow was brazen enough, also, to demand pay for keeping him. That was the time when I got up and talked pointedly.

But I had my faithful dog back, and I kept him more closely by me while I was making the rest of my tour. Six years later it chanced that I lost Jim. While we were waiting at a station, I let him out of the car for a few minutes. The train started unexpectedly and Jim was left behind. A good reward was offered for him, but n.o.body ever came to collect it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Welcomed by President Roosevelt at the Capitol.]

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE END OF THE LONG TRAIL

I WAS glad enough to get out of the crowds of New York. It had given me some rich experiences, but that big city is no place for ox teams. It was good to get away from the jam and the hurry out on to the country roads.

On the way to Philadelphia, between Newark and Elizabeth City, New Jersey, at a point known as Lyon's Farm, the old Meeker homestead stood, built in the year 1676. Here the Meeker Tribe, as we call ourselves, came out to greet me, nearly forty strong.

On the way through Maryland we saw a good many oxen, some of them driven on the road. The funny part of it was to have the owners try to trade their scrawny teams for Dave and Dandy, offering money to boot, or two yoke for one. They had never before seen such large oxen as Dave and Dandy, and for that matter I never had myself. Dandy was of unusual size, and Dave was probably the largest trained ox in the United States then; he was sixteen hands high and eight feet in girth.

I reached Was.h.i.+ngton, the capital, just twenty-two months to the day from the time I left home in Was.h.i.+ngton, the state. As soon as arrangements could be made I went to see President Roosevelt. Senator Piles and Representative Cushman, of the Was.h.i.+ngton Congressional delegation, introduced me to the President in the cabinet room.

Mr. Roosevelt manifested a lively interest in the work of marking the trail. He did not need to be told that the trail was a battlefield, or that the Oregon pioneers who moved out and occupied the Oregon Country while it was yet in dispute between Great Britain and the United States were heroes. When I suggested that they were "the winners of the Farther West," he fairly s.n.a.t.c.hed these words from my lips. He went even further than I had dreamed of or hoped for, in invoking Government aid to carry on the work. Addressing Senator Piles, the President said with emphasis: "I am in favor of this work to mark this trail. If you will bring before Congress a measure to accomplish it, I am with you and will give my support to do it thoroughly."

Mr. Roosevelt thought the suggestion of a memorial highway should first come from the states through which the trail runs. However, it would be possible to get Congressional aid to mark the trail. In any event, he felt it ought to be done speedily.

Unexpectedly the President asked, "Where is your team? I want to see it."

Upon being told that it was nearby, without ceremony, and without his hat, he was soon alongside, asking questions faster than they could be answered, not idle questions, but such as showed his intense desire to get real information, bottom facts.

President Roosevelt was a man who loved the pioneers and who understood the true West. His warm welcome remains in my heart as one of the richest rewards of the many that have come as compensation for my struggle to carry out my dream.

On the eighth of January, 1908, I left Was.h.i.+ngton, s.h.i.+pping my outfit over the Allegheny Mountains to McKeesport, Pennsylvania. From McKeesport I drove to Pittsburgh, and there put the team into winter quarters to remain until the fifth of March. Thence I s.h.i.+pped by boat on the Ohio River to Cincinnati, stopping in that city but one day, and from there I s.h.i.+pped by rail to St. Louis, Missouri.

My object now was to retrace the original trail from its beginnings to where it joined the Oregon Trail, over which I had traveled. This trail properly ran by water from St. Louis to Independence, thence westward along the Platte to Fort Laramie.

At Pittsburgh and adjacent cities I was received cordially and encouraged to believe that the movement to make a great national highway had taken a deep hold in the minds of the people.

I was not so much encouraged in St. Louis. The city officers were unwilling to do anything to further the movement, but before I left the city, the Automobile Club and the Daughters of the American Revolution did take formal action indorsing the work. St. Louis had really been the head and center of the movement that finally established the original Oregon Trail. It was from here that Lewis and Clark started on the famous expedition of 1804-05 that opened up the Northwest. Here was where Wyeth, Bonneville, and others of the early travelers on the trail had outfitted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Brown Bros._

The homeward trip took us through the great industrial cities of the Middle states, among them Pittsburgh.]

The drive from St. Louis to Jefferson City, the capital of the State of Missouri, was tedious and without result other than that of reaching the point where actual driving began in early days. Governor Folk signified his approval of the work, and I was given a cordial hearing by the citizens.

On the fourth of April I arrived at Independence, Missouri, which is generally understood to be the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail. I found, however, that many of the pioneers had s.h.i.+pped farther up the Missouri, some driving from Atchison, some from Leavenworth, others from St. Joseph. At a little later period, mult.i.tudes had set out from Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), where Whitman and Parker made their final break with civilization and boldly turned their faces westward for the unknown land of Oregon.

The Santa Fe and Oregon trails from Independence and Kansas City were identical for forty miles or thereabouts, out to the town of Gardner, Kansas. From there the Santa Fe Trail bore on to the west and finally to the southwest, while the Oregon Trail bore steadily on to the northwest and encountered the Platte valley below Grand Island in what is now Nebraska. At the forks of the road, the historian Chittenden says, "a simple signboard was seen which carried the words 'Road to Oregon,' thus pointing the way for two thousand miles. No such signboard ever before pointed the road for so long a distance, and probably another such never will."

I determined to make an effort to find the spot where this historic sign once stood, and if possible to plant a marker there. Friends in Kansas City, one of whom I had not met for sixty years, took me by automobile to Gardner, where, after a search of a couple of hours, two old residents were found who were able to point out the spot. These men were Mr. V. R. Ellis and Mr. William J. Ott, aged respectively seventy-seven and eighty-two years, whose residence in the near vicinity dated back nearly fifty years. The point is at the intersection of Was.h.i.+ngton Street and Central Street in the town of Gardner.

I planned to drive up the Missouri and investigate the remaining five p.r.o.ngs of the trail--Leavenworth, Atchison, St. Joseph, Kanesville, and Independence. I drove to Topeka, the capital city of Kansas, where I arrived the eleventh of May (1908). There the trail crosses the Kansas River under the very shadow of the State House, not three blocks away; yet only a few knew of it.

On the twenty-third of May the team arrived at St. Joseph, Missouri, a point where many pioneers had outfitted in early days. While public sentiment there was in hearty accord with the work of marking the trail, yet plainly it would be a hard tug to get the people together on a plan to erect a monument. "Times were very tight to undertake such a work,"

came the response from so many that no organized effort was made.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The ox-team pioneer of 1852 tries the airplane trail in 1921.]

The committee of Congress in charge of the bill appropriating fifty thousand dollars to mark the trail, by this time had taken action and had made a favorable report. Such a report was held to be almost equivalent to the pa.s.sage of a bill. So, all things considered, the conclusion was reached to suspend operations, s.h.i.+p the team home, and for the time being take a rest from the work. I had been out from home twenty-eight months, lacking but five days; hence it is small wonder that I concluded to listen to the inner longings to get back to home and home life. On the twenty-sixth of May I s.h.i.+pped the outfit by rail from St. Joseph to Portland, Oregon, where I arrived on the sixth day of June, 1908, and went into camp on the same grounds I had used in March, 1906, on my outward trip.

As I returned home over the Oregon Short Line I crossed the old trail in many places. This time, however, it was with Dave and Dandy quietly chewing their cud in the car, while I enjoyed all the luxuries of an overland train.

I began vividly to realize the wide expanse of country covered, as we pa.s.sed first one and then another of the camping places. I was led to wonder whether or not I should have undertaken the work if I could have seen the trail stretched out, as I saw it like a panorama from the car window. I sometimes think not. All of us at times undertake things that look bigger after completion than they did in our vision of them. We go into ventures without fully counting the cost. Perhaps that was the case, to a certain extent, in this venture; the work did look larger from the car window than from the camp.

Nevertheless, I have no regrets to express or exultation to proclaim.

The trail has not yet been fully or properly marked. We have made a good beginning, however, and let us hope the end will soon become an accomplished fact. Monumenting the old Oregon Trail means more than the mere preservation in memory of that great highway; it means the building up of loyalty, of patriotism, as well as the teaching of our history in a form never to be forgotten.

Words can not express my deep feeling of grat.i.tude for the royal welcome given me by the citizens of Portland. I was privileged to attend the reunion of the two thousand pioneers who had just a.s.sembled for their annual meeting.

The drive from Portland to Seattle is also one long to be remembered; my friends and neighbors met me with kindliest welcome. On the eighteenth day of July, 1908, I drove into the city of Seattle and the long journey was ended. My dream of retracing the way over the Old Trail had come true.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE WHITE INDIAN BOY

BY E. N. WILSON

_In collaboration with Howard R. Driggs_

EVERYONE who knew "Uncle Nick" Wilson was always begging him to tell about pioneer days in the Northwest. When "Uncle Nick" was eight years old, the Wilson family crossed the plains by ox team. When he was only twelve, he slipped away from home to travel north with a band of Shoshones with whom he wandered about for two years, sharing all the experiences of Indian life. Later, after he had returned home, he was a pony express rider, he drove a stage on the Overland route, and he acted as guide in an expedition against the Gosiute Indians.

"Uncle Nick" knew pioneer life and he knew the heart of the Indian. So Mr. Driggs persuaded him to write his recollections and helped him to make his story into a book that is a true record of pioneering and of Indian life with its hards.h.i.+ps and adventures.

_The White Indian Boy_ is an exciting, true story that has interested many boys and girls and contributed to their understanding of the early history of the West.