Success Depends on the Animals

Emigrants, Livestock, and Wild Animals on the Overland Trails, 1840–1869

Diana L. Ahmad

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781943859108
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Between 1840 and 1869, thousands of people crossed the American continent looking for a new life in the West. Success Depends on the Animals explores the relationships and encounters that these emigrants had with animals, both wild and domestic, as they traveled the Overland Trail. In the longest migration of people in history, the overlanders were accompanied by thousands of work animals such as horses, oxen, mules, and cattle. These travelers also brought dogs and other companion animals, and along the way confronted unknown wild animals.Ahmad's study is the first to explore how these emigrants became dependent upon the animals that traveled with them, and how, for some, this dependence influenced a new way of thinking about the human-animal bond. The pioneers learned how to work with the animals and take care of them while on the move. Many had never ridden a horse before, let alone hitched oxen to a wagon. Due to the close working relationship that the emigrants were forced to have with these animals, many befriended the domestic beasts of burden, even attributing human characteristics to them.Drawing on primary sources such as journals, diaries, and newspaper accounts, Ahmad explores how these new experiences influenced fresh ideas about the role of animals in pioneer life. Scholars and students of western history and animal studies will find this a fascinating and distinctive analysis of an understudied topic.

Chapter One

Going West

A SUCCESSFUL JOURNEY TO THE WEST depended on the livestock that pulled the emigrants’ wagons along the overland trails. Aware that the “oxen must be cared for” and that they would be in “sore straits” if they neglected the animals, the emigrants soon realized that the livestock changed how they proceeded west.¹ They read guidebooks, letters from those who preceded them, and articles in newspapers offering advice about the journey. Much of what they read provided suggestions about how to care for the animals, but none of the guidance told the emigrants to anticipate forming a bond with the livestock that they would work with during the three- to four-month adventure. While on the trails emigrants and domestic animals alike became overlanders, together crossing the plains, the mountains, the rivers, and the deserts.

The relationships among many of the emigrants and animals evolved over the months of travel from a pragmatic working association with their horses, mules, and oxen to one of friendship that bonded the travelers and their animals together by struggle. As they moved west the emigrants discovered wild animals unknown to them before the journey. Most of them quickly developed an awareness of the new creatures, while many others developed an appreciation for the wild animals that they had not anticipated. The months on the trails brought the travelers much closer to animals than they had ever been prior to leaving their homes. The animals became more than machines that pulled the plows in their fields at home. They became a vital part of the journey.

Often, emigrants named the animals that pulled their wagons or carried the emigrants’ goods on their backs, such as Joel Barnett, who called his horses Charley and Whip and his oxen Old Baldy and Dick. Naming the animals allowed the travelers to form a closer bond with the creatures and likely reminded them of home and those they left behind. Most emigrants understood that the animals “partake of our labors without profiting by them; of our pleasures without enjoyment in them,” yet made them “friends even” for the few months that they traveled together as “companions,” while still understanding that the animals provided transportation, labor, and revenue.² The animals afforded emotional support through the months of insecurity on the trails. The emigrants and the animals shared the experiences of the lack of good water and food, extremes in temperatures, attacks by insects or wild animals, and the difficult crossings of rivers, mountains, and deserts. The relationship that developed between the animals and the emigrants brought some stability to a time when the unknown elements dominated those of the known. It did not take the emigrants long to realize that “every thing [sic] depends upon taking good care of your animals” and that “the emigrant is entirely dependent on his team,” in order to make it to their destinations.³

Starting in the 1840s people from the United States and Europe traveled west with their livestock, seeking new homes and mineral riches. Some emigrants chose California or Oregon because of their fertile fields, land-speculation opportunities, and healthful climate, while others chose Utah to avoid religious persecution. Still others wanted to avoid the Great Plains, believing it to be the Great American Desert. Many people knew about the West Coast because of the mountain men, traders, and missionaries who had traveled and worked in the region during the previous few decades.⁴

Many future emigrants likely read the words of John L. O’Sullivan from the Democratic Review in the mid-1840s, proclaiming that it was America’s “Manifest Destiny” to spread over the North American continent. O’Sullivan, a Democratic propagandist, scholar, and lawyer, encouraged Americans to expand into Texas and Oregon.⁵ Whether the emigrants understood the meaning of the phrase “Manifest Destiny” or not, they expressed similar sentiments in their letters home, writing about the “‘march’ of impire [sic]” to the Pacific, “Yankee pride and Yankee ambition,” and the “spirit of enterprise” that moved the people west “for the purpose of settling themselves and [their] families” in the new lands.⁶

The American settlement of the Oregon Country began after the Spanish and Russians ceded their claims to the Northwest by the mid-1820s, leaving the United States and Great Britain to discuss who controlled the lands between the forty-second parallel and the 54°40’ line. In the Joint Occupation Treaty of 1818, the British and the Americans agreed to jointly occupy the area until such time that one nation decided to withdraw from the agreement. Between the treaty and the 1840s, several people pushed for the settlement of the area, including Hall Jackson Kelley, who tried to entice settlers to Oregon with plans to re-create the Massachusetts Bay Colony; Nathaniel Wyeth, who attempted to dominate the fur and fish trade; and also missionaries, such as Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and Henry and Eliza Spalding, who tried to convert the local Cayuse people. Although none of the groups succeeded in their appointed tasks, they spread the word about the value of the area through newspapers and speeches that claimed Oregon had rich lands and a healthful climate.⁷ They understood the journey would be difficult, but they “desired El Dorado of the West,” and they “bade our loved ones adieu, and began the long and tedious journey of two thousand miles, through the wilderness of explored land, inhabited only by wild beasts and savages of the forest.”⁸

In June 1846, after the first few years of wagon trains had arrived in Oregon, President James K. Polk signed an agreement with the British, making the region easier to settle as the two nations agreed to extend the forty-ninth parallel nearly to the Pacific Ocean. The agreement gave the United States the formerly disputed area between the Columbia River and the forty-ninth parallel and left the area south of the river, where most of the emigrants had settled, firmly in the hands of the United States. Then in 1850 President Millard Fillmore signed the Donation Land Act, also known as the Oregon Land Law. It allowed settlers to claim unsurveyed lands in the Willamette Valley. Each settler could claim 320 acres, while a married couple could claim a full section of land. The claimants agreed to cultivate the land and live on it for four years, after which they would receive title to the land.⁹

Also during President Polk’s term in office, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in February 1848, ceded approximately one million square miles of land to the United States that included California, the Southwest, and Texas. With the territory gained through the treaty with Spain and the acquisition of the Oregon Country, those wishing to move west could do so, still remain in the United States, and not have to worry about dealing with foreign governments. Coincidentally, gold had been discovered in California just a few days prior to the signing of the treaty with Spain. As news of the gold strike filtered eastward, some people believed that God had saved the gold discovery for the time when the United States possessed the land.¹⁰

While some emigrants waited for the United States to acquire the western lands before moving, others decided to take their chances in California and Oregon without American ownership of the regions. In May 1841 the first wagon train bound for the West Coast left Missouri led by John Bidwell and John Bartleson. This group of approximately seventy people soon joined another group led by Thomas Fitzpatrick, a well-known mountain man, whom missionaries hired to take them to Oregon. The party traveled as one unit until Soda Springs in modern-day Idaho, at which point the group split in two, with the Fitzpatrick group continuing on to Oregon and the Bartleson-Bidwell contingent heading to California on a previously untraveled route. After nearly six months of travel, the Bartleson-Bidwell party became the first group to go overland to California.¹¹

Although few moved to Oregon in 1842, emigration in 1843 increased significantly. In that year the first major group of emigrants headed west with nearly nine hundred men, women, and children and several thousand head of cattle, horses, and oxen.¹² During the pre–Gold Rush years of 1840 to 1848, approximately twelve thousand emigrants went to Oregon, nearly three thousand to California, and fourteen thousand to Utah. The totals grew considerably between 1849 and 1860 as a result of the gold discovery in California, bringing the total number of emigrants to more than two hundred thousand to California, more than fifty-three thousand to Oregon, and more than forty-two thousand to Utah.¹³ Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) who traveled to their Zion in Utah generally stayed on the trails on the north side of the Platte River to avoid conflicts with others who traveled in the same direction.¹⁴

The majority of emigrants came from the Midwest and Upper South, including Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, while others came from Europe, including England, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway. For many, the move west proved temporary, as they only intended to mine for gold, while others hoped to improve their lives in the new lands. Some served with the US military, and others wanted to meet the Native Americans before their cultures changed with the oncoming American population.¹⁵

Many of the men, women, and children kept diaries as they moved west, while others wrote reminiscences many years later. Generally, the emigrants wrote much longer diary entries during the first half of the journey, likely because of the excitement and newness of the adventure. As the days became weeks and then months, the length of the entries shortened as the emigrants tired. Some made brief citations, noting only the weather or the miles traversed that day, while others described the day’s activities in detail. Both male and female writers ranged between long, flowery descriptions to simple data-only entries in their writings. Children’s explanations spent more time on new animals and exciting events, such as stampedes, rather than on mundane comments about the weather. Sometimes emigrants kept diaries in the form of letters home, mailing their writings whenever they reached a place that offered mail services, such as Fort Kearny or Fort Laramie. Most often, the emigrants’ diaries and journals started at the Missouri River and ended when they reached their destinations.

Many of the diarists wrote about their animals. Some noted only the number of animals that made up their outfits, the types of animals that pulled their wagons and carried their goods, or that an animal had died. Others described the animals in great detail, noted the animals’ personalities and idiosyncrasies, and even wrote poetry about them. Some emigrants mourned the deaths of the animals and sometimes wrote about the livestock using terms of high praise. Many diarists found wild animals exciting to see, especially for the first time. They attempted to identify the new animals and compared them to animals at home, such as prairie dogs to squirrels and antelope to white-tailed deer. Some described animals new to them in a straightforward style, noting that buffalo stampeded or that a rattlesnake slithered away. Whether they wrote about the animals in detail or merely with a few words, many emigrants soon learned that wild and domestic animals became an important part of their lives as they crossed the continent.

No one group dominated writing about their animals. Whether they traveled alone or with family members or strangers, or if they moved west to seek riches or farms, many emigrants described their experiences with and feelings about their animals. To understand the intensity of the feelings for the animals that some emigrants developed, it remains important to recognize the magnitude of the daily tasks and troubles that the emigrants and the animals experienced on the trails.

The emigrants, soon to become overlanders, carried many things with them to the west. They carried the obvious items, such as wagons, tools, and food. They also brought along things that did not contain pounds but bore heavily on their minds, such as religion, philosophy, and the feelings of sentimentality and domesticity. Many also thought that they understood how to train an animal for a task, but they soon realized that they needed to learn much more in order to survive the journey. Despite the real and the imaginary weight, the emigrants quickly learned that success depended on the animals.

Chapter Two

Emigrants Take More than Livestock West

WHEN THE EMIGRANTS DECIDED TO MOVE WEST, they needed to determine what supplies they required for the journey. Farming equipment, mining tools, and provisions for the travelers, as well as the feed and goods for the livestock, filled the wagons with many hundreds of pounds. In addition, the emigrants carried the burden of the ideas that they held from their various backgrounds and upbringings. These included religious and philosophical concepts and the teachings of the cult of domesticity. They also carried with them the notions presented to them in artworks and the laws regulating the relationships between humans and animals. They did not anticipate the additional weight that these many ideas added to their baggage.

Success on the trails meant that the emigrants needed to alter the preconceptions they held about animals. Most would learn new ideas about domestic and wild animals as they trekked west. Ministers from Protestant and Catholic churches considered animals inferior to humans. Since the seventeenth century, Western religions generally dismissed nonhuman animals and assumed that only humans possessed intellectual complexity.¹ Abrahamic tradition stated that God created humans above all other life forms and provided animals for them to meet their needs of labor and food. While animal sacrifice ended with the rise of Christianity, early Christians believed that humans ranked above animals because the wild kingdom lacked the ability to reason.² After the fall of Eve in the Garden of Eden, people considered animals frightening creatures that would attack them. As a result, it became necessary to make animals subservient to humans. Early theologians, such as Origen and Augustine, preached and codified the inferior role animals played in the lives of humans. Christians believed that animals had no souls and that Christ died for humans, not for animals, strengthening the separation between the two groups.³

During the seventeenth century, Puritan ministers taught their parishioners that creatures belonged to a howling wilderness. Compounding their teachings, early settlers discovered new animals in North America that added to the uncertainty of human-animal interactions. Others believed that animals served as metaphors for the virtues and vices of humans, such as bulls representing strength and dogs fidelity, while snakes encouraged caution and prudence and wolves greed. Animals also held religious meanings, such as the lamb signifying the sacrifice of Christ and the dove becoming the image of the Holy Spirit.⁴

Churches discouraged having animals as pets because it took time away from worshipping God. Tenderness must be reserved for humans, not animals. Therefore, humans must treat animals kindly but beware of indulging the beasts.⁵ Despite that, Evangelical Protestantism encouraged personal self-discipline in an attempt to achieve perfection that would one day result in animals and humans living together happily once more. In the 1840s even children’s books advocated that because of Eve’s indiscretion, “this sad curse was on the animals too; not by their fault, poor things! But by man’s dreadful sin.”⁶

Many of the emigrants took away from their ministers the understanding that humans ruled over the animals but that the beasts must be treated well. Despite the role assigned to the animals by theologians, the Bible entrusted humans with the responsibility of caring for the animals, granting the beasts a weekly day of rest and demanding that care be given to injured animals or those that had gone astray (Gen. 1:26; Exod. 23:12; Deut. 5:14, 22:1–4).⁷

The biblical theme of keeping humans superior to animals yet caring for them could be read in A Natural History of Animals (1844) by John Bigland, a British schoolmaster. Although originally published in 1828 in England, the American edition of his book came just as people contemplated the move west. The tone of his work modeled the sermons and writings of ministers of the early nineteenth century, emphasizing the importance of treating all animals as the objects of God’s “parental solicitude.” Heavily religious in tone, he wrote that “wanton cruelty” against animals demonstrated “impiety towards their Creator.” Particularly relevant to the future emigrants, he wrote about the horse “as an inestimable gift” from God and that the animals needed to be treated with “attention and kindness” even when the horse became old or injured.⁸ While still in their homes preparing for the journey, little did the future overlanders understand the importance of Bigland’s words and that they would have to deal with many injured and dying animals along the trails.

While some read about how to take care of animals in books, others heard about it from ministers who came to wish the emigrants a safe journey. In 1853 the Reverend J. H. Avery, pastor of the Congregational church in Austinburg, Ohio, offered parti...