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Don Buck is not on the list and has provided a commentary which I will pass
along to you all. In light of the additional postings which came up today,
which I am also passing along to Don, this is merely Part 1. :-) I doubt
that anyone has spent as much time "with" Peter Lassen and his trail as Don.
Stafford
Knowing my interest in the Lassen Trail and Peter Lassen, Stafford Hazelett
has been passing on to me your very informative commentaries. Every time I
was ready to jump into the discussion Stafford would send me a new one,
making me think more about the questions posed. It's been a very absorbing
flow of thoughts, new information, and renewed questions. Hopefully I can
add some information that might be useful in the discussion surrounding
Peter Lassen and his trail.
I think Wendell Huffman's opening inquiry about "what Peter Lassen knew in
1848 when he turned north on the Applegate road" frames the issue quite
well. Subsequent responses were in one way or another aimed at this
inquiry. As I see the lay of the land, it wasn't just what Lassen knew by
1848 but what others with whom he had associated previously thought they
knew about a route to northern California that would be more accessible
than trying to surmount the Sierra Nevada.
Historian Tom Hunt - to whom I'm indebted for much of my understanding of
Peter Lassen and the use of his trail in 1848-49 - has pointed out that there
is a web of evidence that focuses not only on Peter Lassen, but on John
Charles Frémont, Milton McGee, Benoni Hudspeth, and John Myers. McGee and
Myers had traveled with the Joseph Chiles pack train in 1843 that had
turned westward off the Oregon Trail at Ft. Boise. They followed the
Malheur River, and then worked their way south through the Pit River
country to reach Sutter's Fort in November, nearly starving to death in the
process. The following year, McGee and Hudspeth returned to the states
with Frémont by way of various southern trails. We next find Hudspeth and
Myers together on Frémont's expedition in 1846, exploring northern
California and southern Oregon (the same one in which Peter Lassen
participated). Then, in 1847 Myers traveled east to Missouri with Lassen
in Commodore Stockton's party.
By this time, whenever their paths crossed, all of the key players - Frémont,
Lassen, McGee, Hudspeth, and Myers - must have had ample opportunity to
discuss the possibility of opening up a trail to northern California by way
of the Pit River and Sacramento River valley, which they thought were
linked together in a way that afforded a direct and passable wagon
route. A clear indication of this thinking appeared in a letter, already
referred to in the current commentaries, that Myers wrote in February 1849
to the U.S. War Department in Washington:
"I am certain that by the Head of the Sacramento is by far the best Rout
through the Mountain and can be passed at any Season. that leaving Marys
River about one hundred miles above its sink whare the Suthern road to
Oregon now leaves it travel on that road to the Head of Sacramento which
is not over one hundred and fifty miles from the main Valey with verry
little work a good waggon road can be maid Down the Sacramento beaing but
one small mountain to cross not exceding ten miles over it which can be
passed any time during the Winter by this rout"
By the time they were leading their trains to California in 1849, Myers
must have convinced his old trailmates, McGee and Hudspeth, that the best
wagon route to California lay over the northern route. Far from being a
capricious act on the part of the three trail blazers to take the Applegate
Trail and then turn south through the Pit River valley to the Sacramento
valley, it was a well considered decision. However, their plan had one
major flaw that they could not have known at the time. Ironically, the
year before, Peter Lassen had tried just such a route, most likely laboring
under the same assumption that the Pit River valley was linked in an easily
accessible way to the Sacramento Valley. Lassen found out the hard way
that there was no easy link. Unfortunately for the other three, at the
time they could not have known of Lassen's attempt the previous year. We
know from other emigrant accounts that McGee, Hudspeth, and Myers, once
embarked on the Applegate - Lassen Trails, tried unsuccessfully on several
occasions to find a direct wagon route to the Sacramento Valley by turning
off the established route. (There is some evidence that Peter Lassen tried
to do the same thing the previous year.) Finally realizing this was
impossible, the trio had to remain, for better or worse, on Lassen's trail
to its end. I wonder if this supposed more direct route to the Sacramento
Valley that McGee, Hudspeth and Myers sought was the mysterious "Middle
passage?" Also, it seems to me that because McGee, Hudspeth, and Myers
reluctantly had to stick to Lassen's trail route, ol'Pete must have blazed
a pretty good route to the Sacramento Valley.
The major attraction for emigrants taking the combined Applegate Trail to
Goose Lake and then branching off on the Lassen Trail was the allure of
tested trailmen McGee, Hudspeth, and Myers, who emigrants believed knew a
nearer route to the gold fields. Also, by middle August, emigrants had
heard through their communication sources along the Humboldt that water and
grass were scarce ahead. So, beginning on August 11 a major portion of the
migration was diverted to what most emigrants taking this route thought was
a much better trail to the gold fields. This began what Tom Hunt has
called the "Great Diversion."
Another question asked in the commentaries by Richard Stillson fits into
this picture - the significance of the "Sacramento River" in Jesse Applegates
Way Bill. Applegate seems to have had a notion, referenced in his way
bill, that at the point where the Applegate Trail turned west around the
southern end of Goose Lake, emigrants could continue south along the Pit
River drainage to the Sacramento Valley. In this way, they could avoid
crossing the "tremendous" Sierra Nevada on the "present" Truckee
route. About six months later in 1848, Peter Lassen, leading a small wagon
train, took this route to his ranch, although at that time he could not
have known about the Applegate way bill. However, my thinking is that by
this time there was a general understanding on the part of all of these
trail blazers that an easier route could be found to the
south. Interestingly, the Burnett wagon train and a packing party from
Oregon heading to the gold fields in California in 1848 (they would catch
up with Lassen's dispirited party) had turned off of the Applegate Trail at
the eastern shore of Tule Lake which they mistakenly assumed was Goose Lake.
Applegate's reference to the "Sacramento river" in his Way Bill is part of
this general understanding. What Applegate called the "Sacramento river"
was actually the Lost River. Apparently, he thought it was the headwaters
of the Sacramento River to the south. Tom Hunt has speculated that
Applegate may have gotten this mistaken idea from Frémont's famous white
paper map published in 1845 ("Map of an Exploring Expedition to the Rocky
Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon & North California in the Years
1843-44"). On a blank part of this map that he had not explored (hence
"white paper"), Frémont had depicted a long river extending from central
Oregon to the Sacramento Valley which he named "Head Waters of the main
Branch of the Sacramento." But Frémont had only dashed in this river on a
blank part of his map, indicating he had never seen or been on it but
supposed it existed. In making up his way bill, Applegate must have had
access to Frémont's map and assumed the river his exploring party had
crossed at "Rock Bridge" in 1846, which at the time he didn't know empted
into Tule Lake, was Frémont's hypothesized "Head Waters" of the Sacramento
River to the south. A hypothesis had turned into a fact, fueling the hope
in others that there was an easier route from southern Oregon to the
Sacramento Valley, something Peter Burnett would act upon in 1848.
One more view I've held for some time is that Peter Lassen has gotten a bad
rap in the emigrant "press" of his day and in modern history books of our
day. Your commentaries have pointed out correctly, in my thinking, that
there is no evidence to substantiate the view that Peter Lassen enticed
emigrant trains to turn off the main Humboldt route onto his new route with
bogus claims of it being a shorter and easier way to reach the gold
fields. True, the combined Applegate and Lassen Trails to the gold fields
in 1849 ended up as a disaster for many who took it. Where it not for the
government relief operation along the Lassen Trail in '49, it might have
ended up a complete disaster.
So whose fault was it? I think one of the main reasons why Peter Lassen
and his trail got such a bad reputation was the suffering endured by
emigrants at the end of the 1849 migration, most of whom took this northern
route. One astute observer on the Lassen Trail, Alonzo Delano, later wrote
that emigrants who had left the Missouri River late in the season were the
ones who "experienced almost incredible hardships" and who "resembled the
route of an army, with its distressed multitudes of helpless sufferers,
rather than the voluntary movement of a free people." Similar suffering
occurred during the latter part of the migration on the other two primary
routes in 1849 - Truckee Trail and Carson Trail. In terms of difficult
terrain, the combined Applegate-Lassen route was no worse than the other
two. All three had their waterless stretches, difficult mountain passes,
dense forests, river crossings, and rocky trails.
One last item about Lassen. Richard Stillson asked "When did his name
become associated with the cutoff?" The earliest refence to Peter Lassen's
name attributed to the "cutoff" that I've found occurred the day the first
wagon train turned off the Humboldt route in 1849. On Aug. 11 B. R. Biddle
reported the following in one of his letters to the Illinois Daily Journal
in Springfield, Illinois:
"Near this point, is the fork of the Oregon road which was explored by Mr.
Applegate, who conducted his emigration successfully along it to Oregon-
making the head of the Willamette Valley in 1845 [it was 1846]. As I am
writing this, I hear little else discussed around me but the merits and
demerits of this new route. A portion of the emigration, this season,
propose going this way, on account of there being more water and grass
along it than on the usual route to Sutter's Fort, and not increasing the
distance to that point - a point in which we all feel a deep interest
because of its furnishing us with provisions for the winter. This cut-off,
as it is called, will take us from this, (nearly sixty miles from the
"sink" of the river,) almost due west to the head waters of Feather River,
in the vicinity of the Gold Region (that was,) or to the head waters of the
Sacramento which are not far from Feather River. It will not require more
than seven or eight days to accomplish the journey. The Oregon route will
be left, a few days after taking it, and a trail taken to the left which
was traveled, last season with thirteen wagons, by a man named Clareson
[Peter Lassen], who has since settled on Feather River, and has given
Messrs. McGee and Myers, two mountain traders, a description of the road,
which induced them to take it, this morning, with eleven teams. Others are
following them during the day. We are laying over and will take a vote, on
Monday, as to whether we will take it or not. (His party subsequently
voted to take the "cutoff".)
[I suspect the publisher of Biddle's letters made a poor transcription of
his letter about "a man named Clareson." The context of the letter makes
it clear Biddle was referring to Lassen.]
That's all for now.
Don Buck
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