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I want to thank Will Bagley, Wendell Huffman and Richard Silva for their replies to my questions about the Lassen cutoff . Will's description of the cutoff is by far the most detailed that I have read. Will has apparently written a new history of the California and Oregon trails. That's great. It's been quite a while since Unruh and a new history is due. Also, it seems as if Will's book will be much more detailed about the gold rush trails than anything yet published.
I think it is probable that the "middle route" of Swain and others must have something to do with the Nobles Pass as Wendell and Richard suggest. Richard, if you can find a reference to the pack trail over Nobles Pass dated early 1849, or earlier, I would be very interested. Please put it on the list or send it to me directly.
With respect to the "testimony" that Lassen wrote about his trip from Missouri to California in 1848, he did send it east and it was published in the New York Herald February 12, 1849. This was the trip in which Lassen got lost and was rescued by Peter Burnett coming south from Oregon. This article was so blatantly self promoting and misleading it seems almost incredible to one who knows what happened on that trip. (A conjecture: was it this article that caused Unruh to be so down on Lassen?) Anyway, it was on the second page of the newspaper and entitled "Meeting of Emigrants-A New Road." The article was supposedly a report of a committee formed to discuss "a new route taken this season by the emigrants headed by Mr. Lawson." It calls Lassen "Capt. P. Lawson" and talks about the route "surveyed by Capt. Lawson on the Sacramento river, at a point about S. E. of the Little Clamoth Lake." It then goes on to extol the "pass discovered by Captain Lawson, one of the finest in the world" which could be easily improved "with very little labour" and which would benefit travelers from the United States to California and Oregon. The so-called report ended by tendering Captain Lawson a vote of thanks and three cheers. I don't know if Peter Burnett, who was not even mentioned in the article, ever saw this "report" but if he did it surely would have made him mad. I suppose it is possible that Biddle, Swain, Bruff, and others may have seen this article before they left the states. The article, along with Meyer's association with Lassen in Brunswick in early 1848, may explain the how Lassen's name became associated with the cutoff and the frequent spelling of Lassen's name as Lawson.
We need a good biography of Lassen. Wendell, are you working on one? I hope so. The only biography I know of is an article by Johnson Swartzlow, "Peter Lassen: Northern California's Trail-Blazer," California Historical Society Quarterly, 1939, 291-314. It is not only very old, it is inadequate for someone whose name is plastered all over the map of Northern California.
One other question. The Applegate Waybill was copied by Israel Hale in the back of his diary, as Will stated in his chapter, and Hale wrote that it came from the New York Herald. I have read every issue of the Herald, including his California Herald, from about mid 1848 through May 1849, and I never saw the waybill printed in the paper. It was published in the Oregon Spectator April 6, 1848, but I don't think John Gordon Bennett of the Herald received the Spectator through the exchanges; he did not publish any other article from the Oregon newspaper. Of course I may have missed it. If anyone knows if the waybill was published in the Herald, or any other eastern newspaper, would they please notify me. Thanks.
Dick Stillson
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