John Lowery Brown's account of his journey from Grand Saline to California / Native American; Cherokee
Gilcrease Museum
Page 1 Annotation 6 This crossing was near the noted salt spring, the Grand Saline, located about a mile south of the present town of Salina, in Mayes County. Washington Irving, during his visit to Oklahoma in 1832, mentioned this crossing in his journal, describing the scene— “a beautiful, clear river— group of Indian nymphs half-naked on banks.” He also described Colonel Auguste P. Chouteau’s residence near the Grand Saline. (The Irving Journals, published by the Bibliophile Society, Boston, 1919. V ol. I l l , p. 139.) Dr. Grant Foreman has called attention to the fact that this crossing on Grand River became such an important rendezvous or emigrants to California and a flourishing trading point of which Lewis Ross’s store was the principal establishment, that a postoffice was established there on June 11, 1849. It was called Grand Saline, Robert D. Ross being appointed the first postmaster.
Page 2 Annotations 7 Thomas Fox Taylor, born in East Tennessee, in 1818, was the eldest son of Richard and Ellen McDaniel Taylor. Richard Taylor, in his turn eldest son o f Charles Fox and Jennie Walker Taylor, was a prominent leader among his people, serving as assistant chief of the Cherokee Nation with John Ross from 1851-55. According to a tradition in the family, Charles Fox Taylor was the second son of an English noble by the name of Fox and his wife, Jennie Taylor, a Scotch woman. The parents separated, the eldest son remaining with the father and being vested, by right of primogeniture, with the Fox estate. The second son remained with his mother and was known as Charles Fox Taylor. The mother married a second time, immigrated to America, bringing Charles with her, and settled near the Cherokee Nation East. Charles made friends among the Cherokee people and married Jennie Walker, a granddaughter of Ghigau or Beloved Woman of the Cherokees. The Ghigau (also known by the English name of Nancy Ward ) was conferred great power by the Cherokee Council for her bravery in a battle with the Creeks. She has been described as a woman “of queenly and commanding presence and manners” her house being “furnished in a style suitable to her high dignity.” Thomas Fox Taylor attended the mission schools in his nation and the Nashville and Knoxville colleges of Tennessee. He became well known as a politician in the Cherokee Nation even as a young man, and was especially noted as an orator, fluent in both the English and the Cherokee. His first public office was that of clerk and interpreter of the Cherokee Council. Later when elected member of the Cherokee National Committee from Going Snake District, he was also elected president of the Committee. In the organization of Colonel Stand Watie’s Cherokee Mounted Rifle Regiment, near Fort Wayne on July 12, 1861, for the Confederate service, Thomas Fox Taylor was elected lieutenant colonel of the regiment. Colonel Taylor and several of his command were killed in a skirmish between Confederate and Federal troops on Bayou Menard the morning of July 27, 1862. That he took an active and leading part in the Cherokee parties to California in 1850 is shown by frequentmention of his name in Brown’s journal, which bears out statements appearing in an old biography (O’Beirne, The Indian Territory: Its Chiefs, Legislators and Leading Men. pp. 460-1): “Thomas Fox Taylor was not only a natural orator, but a brilliant wit, and the center of attraction wherever he went. He was a dashing officer, and invariably the leader when any adventure or enterprise was to be undertaken. Thomas Fox Taylor’s name will be long remembered among his people.” 8 Devereaux Jarrette Belle was the son of John and Charlotte Adair Bell. His sister, Sallie Caroline, was the wife of General Stand Watie. His nephew, Lucien B. (Hooley) Bell, took an active part in the affairs of the Indian Territory and held many positions of trust in the Cherokee Nation beginning with 1870. D. Jarrette Bell’s wife, Juliette Lewis Vann, was considered the most beautiful girl of her day in the Cherokee Nation. She accompanied him on the journey overland to California in 1850. One day his company met up with a band of Cheyenne Indians, whose chief was so impressed with Juliette’s beauty that he offered fifty ponies for her, wanting to buy her and make her his wife. The young husband refused of course, stating with emphasis that he would not trade his wife to anyone for any consideration.— Information from Mr. George W. (Dr. Emmet Starr’s History of the Cherokee Indians [The Warden Company, 1921] has been consulted for genealogical material in the footnotes of this article.) 9Camp 1st was just west of the present town of Adair, in Mayes County. 10Near Coody’s Bluff in Nowata County. 11Camp 4 was on the waters of California Creek, Nowata County. The name of California Creek and that of its branch “ Mormon Creek,” are reminders of the days when the California emigrating parties and, also, some parties of Mormons, who passed through the Indian Territory in early times, traveled along the trail in this vicinity.
Page 3 Annotation 12Captain Clement Vann McNair’s party had been at this point for some days awaiting the arrival of other emigrating companies expected up the trail from the Grand Saline. (Information from Dr. Grant Foreman) Clement Vann McNair was the youngest child of David and Delilah Amelia Vann McNair. Mr. Benjamin Gold, the father of Mrs. Elias Boudinot, in writing his brother in New England (1829), told of visiting the home of David McNair when traveling through the Cherokee Nation now within the boundaries of the State of Georgia (Emmet Starr, Early History of the Cherokees, p. 109). Mr. Gold wrote, “ We then traveled twenty miles and came to a Mr. McNair’s, a white man who had married a Cherokee Indian woman, sister of Mr. Joseph Vann, another Cherokee chief. (Mr. Vann was not a chief, this was a common error with people that did not know.— Starr’s note.) He [McNair] had a beautiful white house, and about six or seven hundred acres of the best land you ever saw, and Negroes enough to tend it and clear as much more as he pleased. He raised this year about five thousand bushels of corn, and it would make you feel small to see his situation.” Clement Vann McNair was elected solicitor, or attorney, of Saline District by the Cherokee National Council in 1841-2. He was elected member of the Senate from Saline District for the term 1845-7. He served as delegate from the Cherokee Nation to Washington in 1846. His first wife was Susannah Martin, daughter of Judge John Martin, who was the first treasurer and later the first chief justice of the Cherokee Nation. His second wife was Mrs. Martha Ann (Childers) Smith whom he married in California. He never returned to the Cherokee Nation.
Page 5 Annotation 13“ Captain L. Evans of Fayetteville, Arkansas, headed a party of forty wagons and one hundred and thirty persons from Washington County, Arkansas, and the Cherokee Nation April 20, 1849,” for California.— Foreman, Early Trails Through Oklahoma, op cit., p. 110.
Page 6 Annotations 14The organization of emigrant parties to California for protection, discipline and method in traveling was very important. Officers, consisting of a captain and, sometimes, a first and a second lieutenant, were elected by the members of the party. The position of captain called for a man having courage, determination, patience and a knowledge of human nature, in addition to a thorough acquaintance with life on the frontier. The hardships encountered on the long journey across the continent often brought about discontent among his followers. Sometimes disputes and quarrels arose, with the various members taking sides, causing divisions of the party on the trail. Such divisions were attended by many dangers, for the guard of both parties was thus weakened and there was the possibility of shortage of food and supplies in the wilderness. 15At the fork with the Santa Fe Trail, Captain Evans had set up a large stone marked “ To Fayetteville, Ark., 300 miles—Capt. Evans’ Com’y, May 12, 1849.” —Foreman, op. cit. p. 111.
Page 8 Annotation 16When he had departed for California, John H. Wolfe left his young wife, Elizabeth Saunders Wolfe, at home with their infant son, Richard Murrel. He said he was going to California in search of gold so that he would be able to give his young son every educational advantage. However, he was an old man when he came back to the Cherokee Nation on a visit, his first since leaving in 1850. In the meanwhile, Richard had grown up, married and had a family of his own. He had proven himself a young man of character and ability and was largely self-educated. He was elected to various offices of trust in the Cherokee Nation and served as delegate to Washington for four years. After visiting his son and old home, John H. Wolfe returned to California to look after some property interests there, but it was not long until he died and was buried in his adopted state.
Page 9 Annotations 17Crowded in the upper corner of the page above this entry in the journal appear the words “ Camp 19.” This was an evident error for the party were still in Camp 18, “ laying by,” on May 21. Brown corrected this in the entry for the following day, listing the next camp on Walnut Creek “Camp 19,” the party having traveled twenty miles on May 22. 18Pawnee Rock is in the southeastern part of Barton County, Kansas.
Page 11 Annotations 19About eight miles west of present Dodge City, Kansas, were the ruins, many years ago, of an old adobe fort called Fort Mann. It was also called Fort Atkinson.— Frank A. Blackmar, Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Vol. I, pp. 667-8. 20The meeting with Major Fitzpatrick occurred at the Lower Crossing of the Arkansas, near the present town of Cimarron, Gray County, Kansas. Here the Santa Fe Trail forked, one branch crossing the river and leading to the Southwest across the Panhandle of Oklahoma. This was known as the Cimarron route of the Santa Fe Trail. Brown’s party took the other branch of the Trail, following the Arkansas River on the north side to Bent’s Fort. Major Thomas Fitzpatrick was U. S. Indian Agent for the tribes living in the region of the Upper Platt and the Upper Arkansas rivers. In February, 1850, he set out from Fort Laramie (Wyoming) to hold a series o f councils with the Indians. In May, he arrived at a point on the Arkansas, called the “ Big Timber,” where he met up with a large gathering of Indians, representatives from nearly every tribe of the Upper Arkansas, accompanied by a party of traders. Remaining here about a month, he then proceeded to the Lower Crossing of the Arkansas, where he held the council referred to in Brown’s journal. Mention of this meeting appears in Major Fitzpatrick’s report to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, dated September 24, 1850, from St. Louis, as follows: “ I then continued down the Arkansas river [from the ‘Big Timber’] by slow and easy marches, in company with the traders and all the Indians, until we arrived at the crossing of the great Santa Fe thoroughfare. Here we made another halt until the 10th of June, on which day, after disbanding the Indians, and recommending each band to proceed to their own proper hunting grounds, I took my departure for this place. * * * The following are the names of the different tribes which assembled with me at the crossing of the Arkansas, all of whom seemingly entertain the best and most friendly feelings toward us: the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arripahoes, Kiawas, and Apaches. The Apaches here mentioned are not those of New Mexico which have been ravaging the country for years; they are a band of fifty lodges, that have for many years lived with the Kiawas and Co- manches, and have aided them in all their wars against both Mexicans and Americans. Those tribes herein mentioned are very formidable, and the most warlike on this continent, and occupy, indiscriminately, the country [including what is now Western Oklahoma], for several hundred miles, through which all the great thoroughfares to New Mexico, Oregon, and California pass.” The Co- manches had not attended the meeting, sending word that they feared the cholera raging the country at the time, and forwarding their expressions of friendship and good feeling toward the Americans.—Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1850, pp. 52-3. Thomas Fitzpatrick’s career covered the period from the opening of the rich fur region west o f the Rocky Mountains in the early 1820’s to the beginning of regular settlement o f the Kansas-Nebraska country. A native of Ireland, born in 1799, he came to the United States at about the age of seventeen. One of a good family, with thorough schooling up to the time of his leaving home, together with a strong physique, an alert mind, and a talent for swiftly appraising a situation, distinguished him among the “ Mountain Men” of his time. As a trapper, trader, Indian fighter, head o f the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, guide, explorer, and Indian agent, his name may be counted among the first of the roster that listed such men as Kit Carson and James Bridger. From an accident with a rifle, Fitzpatrick’s left hand was maimed when still a young man. Afterward he was known on the frontier and among the Indians as “ Broken Hand.” In 1845, he was the official guide o f the expedition sent out by the Government, under the command o f Lieutenant James William Abert, to explore the country now included in the Panhandle of Oklahoma. This expedition is notable in Oklahoma history for being the first to travel overland from Bent’s Fort to the Canadian, thence down that stream to Fort Gibson with a train of wagons. The life of Thomas Fitzpatrick has been recounted in the biographical volume Broken Hand, by LeRoy R. Hafen and W. J. Ghent (The CTld West Publishing Company, Denver, 1931).
Page 12 Annotation 21June 3 is the date that Brown wrote on the flyleaf of his journal. He must have turned back and written on the flyleaf on that date, since the first entry in the journal was dated April 20. Or, perhaps, he began his journal on June 3, taking time while the company “lay by” at Camp 27 to make the entries from memory or from notes kept elsewhere since leaving the Cherokee Nation. If he did begin his journal on June 3, had he purchased the little leather bound notebook from the traders who were with Major Fitzpatrick on the Arkansas? If so, this notebook itself has had a remarkable history.
Page 13 Annotation 22Bent’s Fort was on the north side of the Arkansas River, above the mouth of the Purgatory River, in Southeastern Colorado. It was founded in 1829 by William Bent and became a well-known establishment in the trade of the Santa Fe Trail. The route followed by Brown’s party via Brent’s Fort thence north through Colorado into Wyoming was an old Indian trail, used by early day trappers and traders in the Rocky Mountain region. The Spanish Peaks, in Southern Colorado, were noted landmarks, known by the Indians of that region as “ Wah- to-yah,” the Breasts of the World.— Hafen and Ghent, op. cit. p. 173.
Page 14 Annotation 23Fountain Creek, Colorado.
Page 15 Annotations 24Camp 40th was in the vicinity of the present city of Colorado Springs. 25Cherry Creek, Colorado.
Page 16 Annotations 26This crossing and Camp 43 were on the present site of Denver, Colorado. 27The mention of the discovery of gold by a member of this party of Cherokees, on Ralston’s Creek (a branch of Gear Creek), is an interesting incident. Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard in Pathbreakers (Arthur H. Clark Co., 1933), p. 204, wrote that some Cherokees on their way home from California, in 1858, discovered gold on Cherry Creek. Colorado was practically an unknown country at that time. After returning to their nation the Cherokees organized a mining company and went back to the Rocky Mountains the same year to dig for gold. Soon afterward, numerous parties were formed by other prospectors for trips into the mountains, marking the beginning of the regular search for gold in Colorado.
Page 19 Annotation 28The crossing of the Cache La Poudre River was in the vicinity of Fort Collins, Larimer County, Colorado. Camp 49 was in the neighborhood of the Virginia Dale. Captain John C. Fremont in his Report of an Exploring Expedition to the Rock Mountains, 1842-3-4, p. 122, described the country along this route. He wrote that after crossing the Cache La Poudre and entering a smoother country, his party “traveled along a kind of vallon, bounded on the right by red buttes and precipices * * "
Page 21 Annotation 29The pass was on the upper course of Pass Creek, a tributary of the North Platte, in Carbon County, Wyoming. In describing “ the pass of the Medicine Butte” (Ibid. p. 125), Captain Fremont said that here was a broad trail, leaving which he traveled “ over a plain on the west side of the pass, where the road was terribly rough with artemisia” and ravines, before arriving at a ford on the North Platte. Brown’s party crossed the North Platte near the mouth of Sage Creek. The Overland Mail Route to California crossed the river in this vicinity from 1861-69.— Hafen, op. cit., p. 231 and accompanying map.
Page 25 Annotations 30Bridger’s Pass, about twenty miles southwest of Rawlins, Wyoming.— J Cecil Alter, James Bridger, p . 224. The first notable expedition of traders and trappers that followed the trail west from the Cache La Poud revia the Laramie Plain, the North Fork of the Platte and the pass (af terward called Bridger’s Pass) was that of William Henry Ashley, in 1825. Thomas Fitzpatrick was one of the leading trappers of his party.--Hafen and Ghent, op. cit., p. 51. 31Elk Head Creek was a branch (possibly Muddy Creek) of what is now Little Snake River, in Southern Wyoming. Little Snake River is a tributary of the Yampa, in Northern Colorado. The stream called Elk Head Creek by Brown was evidently not the present Elk Head Creek, a branch of the Yampa show on present day maps, lying farther south in Colorado. Captain Fremont said (op. cit., p. 124) that the stream called Little Snake River by the trappers, of that time, was called "Yampah" by the Snake Indians. He preferred the Indian name and entered it on his map accompanying his reprot (q.v.) He indicated what is now Little Snake River as Elk Head Rive. "Yampah" was the name of a plant, the root of which was used for food by the Snake Indians. They resorted every year to the region of the Yampah or Little Snack River to gather the plant. For references in regard to the confusion of Elk Head, Little Snake, and Yampah rives, see Fremont, op. cit., p.280; also, Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, Fremont and '49 (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1914), p. 274.
Page 27 Annotation 32Undoubtedly what is now Little Snake River.
Page 28 Annotation 33Bitter Creek, Western Wyoming. The rough dry country over which the party had traveled was the Red Desert. The route since leaving the North Platte via Bridger's Pass, Sulphur Spring, etc., wa approximately that of the Overland Mail in 1862--Hafen, op. cit., p. 231 and accompanying map; also, Grace Raymond Hebard and E.A. Brininstool, The Bozeman Trail (Arthur H. Clark Co., 1922) Vol. 1, pp. 71 and 120, and accompanying map.
Page 35 Annotation 34Fort Bridger was founded by James Bridger, the noted trapper and trader in 1842. It was taken over my Mormons in 1854. The site was leased by the Government in 1857, the fort being rebuilt and regularly garrisoned from1858-90.--Alter, op. cit., pp. 170-8, 244-63, 295-328. Fort Hall was located in what is now Southeastern Idaho, east of the Snake River, on the Oregon Trail.
Page 38 Annotation 35Echo Canyon and Red Fork Creek, Utah.
Page 40 Annotation 36Emigration Canyon before reaching Salt Lake City, Utah. Captain Marcy wrote in 1859, "Forage can be purchased here, as well as most articles the traveler may require, at high prices. There is no camping place within two miles of the city. It is best for those who encamp with animals to cross the Jordon River, r stop near the mouth of the canyon before entering the city.” — Marcy, op. cit., p. 273
Page 41 Annotation 37The Northern Route headed around the north end of Salt Lake, thence we stand south to the Humboldt or Mary's River in norther Nevada. The "Cutoff," the route followed by Brown's party, rounded the south end of lake, thence across the Salt Lake Desert west. It was approximately the same route traveled by the noted Donner Party that emigrated west in 1846-7.--- Eliza P. Donner Houghton, The Expedition of the Donner Party (Arthur H. Clark Co. 1920), pp. 34-35.
Page 43 Annotation 38Return Jonathan Meigs (5th) was the son of Timothy and Elizabeth Holt Meigs, daughter of a wealthy farmer from Virginia, who settled near Athens, Tennesse. Timothy Meigs was private secretary and confidential clerk to his father, Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs, soldier of the American Revolution and well known agent to the Cherokees from 1801-23. Timothy Meigs' family lived on a farm near Charleston, Tennesse. It was there that Return Jonathan Meigs (5th) was born on April 3, 1812. He married Jane Ross, daughter of Cheif John Ross, at Cleveland, Tennessee, and came to the Indian Territory with the chief's family in 1839. After arriving in their new home Mr. Meigs occupied a handsome bring home on the east side of the Illinois River not far from Park Hill. During the disorders in the Cherokee Nation that approached civil war, a party of Cherokees disguised as bandits came to his home November 2, 1845 and tried to kill him. Mr. Meigs and his family escaped but the attackers plundered and burned his home. Mr. and Mrs. Meigs's son, the venerable Return Robert, still lives at Park Hill. He remembers the morning his father set out from home for California. During the family prayer, just before his departure, Return Jonathan Meigs read the Thirty-seventh Psalm, his favorite scripture. Today, his son and his family love that Psalm and read it often. On the morning of August 6, 1850, when the emigrating party were "laying by" at the Elbow Springs, they spent some time cutting grass to feed their stock in the desert. Mr. Meigs complained of not feeling well and asked the men to let him help with the work among the first. After cutting his share of grass, he raked it up and carried into camp. By that time, he was very ill and lay down on the heap of grass to rest. Within a few minutes, he passed away, saying that all was well with him.---Information from Mrs. Jennie Matthews, of Park Hill, Oklahoma, daughter of Return Robert Meigs.
Page 46 Annotation 39Mr. George Mayes of Oklahoma City, tells the following story: Ben Trott set out to California on a fine horse which he highly prized. One day the company came upon a large herd of buffalo. Ben Trott and some men started out on their horses on the run, planning to separate a bunch of buffalo cows and calves from the main herd and shoot come of the calves. Trott raced ahead of his companions. About that time, the buffaloes winded the hunters and began running away across the prairie, Trott right after them. Suddenly his horse stumbled and fell and sent him sprawling. The horse jumped up, ran off with the buffaloes and was never seen again. Trott jarred and mortified by the fall, just stood and wept as he watched his horse disappear in the distance, much to the amusement of the other hunters.
Page 49 Annotation 40George G. Martin was the son of Samuel Martin, a half-brother of Judge John Martin, first chief justice of the Cherokee Nation. Among the Cherokees of the emigrating party, in 1850, who helped to bury every person who died on the way to California, was Dennis W. Bushyhead. He remained in California until 1867. After returning to his old home, he was elected and served as chief of the Cherokee Nation (1879-86). His brother, Edward W., or Ned, Bushyhead had gone to California in 1849, settling finally at San Diego and never returning in live in the Cherokee Nation. He served at one time as chief of police in San Diego and also was elected sheriff of San Diego County. Mr. A. Taylor, of Muskogee tells of visiting Ned Bushyhead at his home in San Diego, in 1892. One day while watching a review of the U.S. fleet in San Diego Bay, Mr. Taylor remarked that the sight was the most wonderful he had ever witnessed. During the course of the conversation, Mr. Bushyhead said the most wonderful sight that he himself has ever witnessed had been during his journey overland to California in 1849. One day his party was traveling over a great desert when a terrible storm arose. It grew so dark and the wind blew such a hurricane that the train was forced to stop. It seemed as if the emigrants and their horses and wagons would be buried in the sand that whirled into drifts about them. In the midst of the storm an old Cherokee woman knelt down and began to pray in Cherokee. Ned Bushyhead listened closely, impressed with the fervor of her words seeking Divine aid in the danger that threatened. Suddenly the wind ceased. Then the darkness lifted as a shaft of light broke through the clouds and rested upon the bent shoulders of the old Cherokee woman kneeling on the desert. In a little while, the sand and dust in the air settled and the emigrants began their journey again over the trail to California.
Page 51 Annotation 41After traveling through the mountains in what is now Eastern Navada, en route to California, the famous Donner party three years before had come to a beautiful valley, which they called “the Valley of Fifty Springs.” (Houghton, op. cit., p. 44.) Brown’s party was traveling in this same region. The bold running stream was a branch of the South Fork of the Humboldt River, Nevada.
Page 58 Annotation 42The St. Mary's or Mary's River was first named after Marie or Mary, the Shoshone Indian girl wife of a member of Peter S. Ogden's trapping and exploring party, in 1825. Some years afterward, it was called the Ogden River in honor of its discover. Still later, John C. Fremont named it the Humboldt, the name of which it is still known.--Hubert Howe Bandcroft, History of Nevada, Vol. XXV, pp. 36-7.
Page 60 Annotations 43The blurrs and blots that appear in the writing on pages 59 and 60, together with a number of corrections by crossing out figures and words, indicate the difficulty Brown had in keeping the journal at this time. No better explanation than the words "No Bread" in the date margin can be made for the error of his writing "Camp 102" twice in succession, after the party had traveled thirty miles both on the 2nd and the 3d of September. 44Lassen’s Meadows. Captain Marcy (op. cit., p. 276.) wrote: "At the Big Meadows, 23 miles from the Sink of the Humboldt, travelers should make a halt of a day or two to rest and recruit their animals and to cut grass for crossing the desert at this is the last good camping place until reaching Carson River." The Meadows were like a great swamp or morass, pitted with deep water holes or natural wells. Emigrants pastured their stock and cut grass for forage on the dry spots of ground, that were said to cover about one thousand acres, scattered over the meadows.
Page 61 Annotation 45The famous "Sink of the Humboldt," now called Humboldt Lake, in Western Nevada. The "Sink" or lake was about six miles long, that is from the north end to the point where the water of the river seemed to disappear in the desert. For the reason, early emigrants applied the name "sink" to this part of the river. It was forty miles across the desert to Carson River.
Page 63 Annotation 46The settlement that sprang up here was called Ragtown. The year 1850 was the worst in the period of the gold rush (1849-53). “So many oxen and horses perished in the fatal sink that the effluvia revived the cholera, and sent it to ravage the enfeebled crowds which escaped into the Sacramento Valley. Behind them on the plains were still thousands battling not alone with this and other scourges, but with famine and cold, for snow fell early and massed in heavy drifts. Tales of distress were brought by each arrival, told not in words only, but the blanched and haggard features, until California was filled with pity, and the government combined with the miners and other self-sacrificing men in efforts for relief. * * * Emaciated men, carrying infants crying for food stopped to feed on the putrefying carcasses lining the road, or to drink from alkaline pools, only to increase their misery, and finally end in suicide. ‘The suffering is unparalleled’ cry several journals in September, 1850, in their appeal for relief; nine-tenths of the emigrants were on foot, without food or money; not half of their oxen, nor one-fourth of their horses, survived to cross the mountains, and beyond the desert were still 20,000 souls, the greater part of whom were destitute.” —Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, Vol. VI, pp. 154-5.
Page 68 Annotation 47Oliver Hazard Perry Brewer was a captain in Company C of Colonel Stand Watie’s Cherokee Mounted Rifle Regiment, in 1861. Mr. Brewer married Delilah Amelia Vann. Their son, O. H. P. Brewer, Jr., now of Muskogee, was elected a member of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention in 1906.
Page 70 Annotations 48Carson Pass, in Eastern California, south of Lake Tahoe. The first Summit was said “ by old-timers to be the most dreaded 10,560 feet” of mountain road west of the Missouri River. The lake in the valley is called Twin Lakes, near Kirkwoods, California. With the crossing of the second Summit, the party had crossed the Sierra Nevada and were at last on the Pacific slope— Archer Butler Hulburt, Forty-Niners, (Little, Brown and Company, 1932) pp. 279-81. 49Leak Spring, Eastern El Dorado County, California. 50Right hand road led to Hangtown, now Placerville, California.
Page 72 Annotation 51From information kindly supplied by Willard O. Waters, Bibliographer for Americana, Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California, the places mentioned by Brown after leaving Leak Springs were in El Dorado County, California. Camp Creek was thirty miles east of Placerville. Pleasant Valley was ten miles southeast of Placerville. “ Ring Gold” was on the road from the latter place to the southern part of the County. Weaverville (or Weberville), the site of which has now “ reverted to wilderness,” was about five miles south of Coloma and two miles from Placerville. Weaverville, or Weberville, was one of the mining camps on Weber Creek, having been founded by Charles M. Weber in 1848.— Bancroft, History of California, op. citM p. 74; Hulburt, op. cit., p. 316; George Willis Read, A Pioneer of 1850. (Little, Brown, and Company, 1927), pp. 90 and 97 and index.
Page 73 Annotations 52Dead Man’s Hollow was near El Dorado, California. 53George Washington Adair was the son of Walter and Rachel Thompson Adair. He was a signer of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, providing for the removal of his nation to the Indian Territory. Again in 1846, he signed the Cherokee treaty concluded at Washington, as a delegate of the “ Treaty Party.” In 1861, he was elected quartermaster of Colonel Stand Watie’s Cherokee Mounted Rifle Regiment. He died on April 22, 1862, and was succeeded by his son, Brice Martin Adair. Mr. G. W. Adair had married Martha Martin, oldest daughter of Judge John Martin, of the Cherokee Nation. Their oldest son was the brilliant William Penn Adair, colonel of the Second Cherokee Mounted Rifles and delegate from the Cherokee Nation to the Confederate Congress. Samuel Houston Mayes, Sr., was of English-Welsh descent and a native of Tennessee. His wife, Nancy Adair, was a sister of George W. Adair. Mr. Mayes was accompanied by his four oldest sons (George W., Sr., John, Frank, and James) to California in 1850, but remained only a few months. In the spring of 1851, he went back over the Cherokee Trail to California, taking with him a herd of two hundred cattle. He sold the most of them before he returned to the Cherokee Nation and left the rest with his son Frank to be sold. After selling his father’s cattle, the young man set out for home, but was robbed and killed on the way. Mr. S. Mayes’ oldest son, George W. Sr., had married Charlotte Bushyhead, sister of Dennis W. Bushyhead who went to California in 1850 (see footnote 40). It is to Mr. George W. Mayes, Jr., now of Oklahoma City, who was two years old when his father (George W. Sr.,) set out for the gold fields, that acknowledgment is due for much of the reminiscent and geneological material used in the footnotes of this article.
Page 75 Annotation 54The following description in “ Forty-Niners” (Hulburt, op. cit., p. 284) tells of conditions among the California immigrants upon their arrival in the gold fields in 1849-53: “ Now, actually in the Diggings, what we do see—what is the impression? Whole mountains of dirt to be removed; hard labor of the stiffest kind known to man— shoveling. And for people in what condition, physically? The poorest imaginable. Even the healthy unfitted for such backbreaking labor during the first few weeks after their arrival in this climate; for fever and ague are to be met and mastered. But no great percentage of us are at all well. Monotonous diet, poor water, and the strain and stress of desert travel have left its mark on most; scurvy and diarrhea have undermined 50 per cent of us or more. For all these such work as shoveling dirt, sometimes waist deep in water, often knee deep, seldom if ever with dry feet, is a hazard that only one man in fifty assumes without being made ill within four days. We have seen sad sights all along this California Trail; but just momentary glimpses in these diggings have exhibited some just as sad—here, at the very goal!”
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Foreword by Muriel H. Wright, June 1934.
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Yellowed and crumbling with the passing of eighty-four years, the pages of a small, leather bound notebook reveal the story of the overland journey of a party of Cherokees who set out from the Grand Saline, Cherokee Nation, for California in 1850. This journal was kept by a young Cherokee, John Lowery Brown, who recorded the progress of the emigrants day by day. It tells the difficulties encountered along a wilderness trail through the Rocky Mountains; the perils of travel over vast stretches of desert without water and food; the danger of attack by hostile Indians living in those regions; and the terrible epidemic of cholera that swept the West, causing the deaths of thousands of emigrants along all the thoroughfares to the Pacific coast in 1850. Something in the flourish of the faded words “Off for California” at the top of the first page of this old journal still imparts the enthusiasm and high courage that fired the spirits of the adventurers to leave their nation in view o f such hazards. Lured by the discovery of gold in California, several parties of Cherokees, other than Brown’s, set out about the same time. Many of them were young men who never returned home.
The journal was written in ink, an entry being made every day from the time Brown left a point near present Stillwell, Adair County, Oklahoma, on April 20, until reaching the gold fields in California on September 28, a total of 161 days. Intermittent entries were set down in the journal up to December 11, 1850. The writing, spelling and punctuation compare well with other early records, kept in the midst of the excitement and the hardships attending life on an overland trail. The pages are not numbered, all entries having been set down consecutively on the right hand page up to and including page forty-four, after which regular entries were made on both sides of the leaf. There are seventy- five pages of entries, additional notes appearing in the date margins and on several pages to the left up to page forty-four.
The publication of this journal for the first time and its presentation herewith to readers of Chronicles of Oklahoma were made possible through the loan of the original by its present owner, Mrs. E. W. Gist, of Oklahoma City, a granddaughter of John Lowery Brown. 1 The transcript which follows is an exact copy of the original, including spelling, punctuation, position of the entries on the page, marginal notes, and left hand page notes. However, in some places where no punctuation appears in the original, spaces have been left in the transcript to make the reading less confusing. In all instances, annotations by the editor,in the text, are designated by small figures. Numbers of the pages, counted and indicated by the editor, appear in brackets.
Taylor taking his place. The route followed through Oklahoma lay northwest from the crossing of the Grand River, near the Grand Saline, across Pryor Creek to the Verdigris, fording that stream near Coody’s Bluff, thence up California and Caney creeks and across to the Arkansas Valley near the present northern boundary of Oklahoma. Proceeding north, the party struck the Santa Fe Trail about eight miles east of Turkey Creek, in present Kansas, and followed this trail to Bent’s Fort in Southeastern Colorado. The route then led by way of Pueblo, Cherry Creek (Colorado) and Bridger’s Fort (Wyoming) to Salt Lake City; thence across the Salt Lake Desert and the mountains of Eastern Nevada to the Humboldt River, following that stream and the Carson River on up to Carson’s Pass over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and down to Weaverville (Weberville), a mining camp or town in Eastern California at that time. That the parties of gold seekers from the Cherokee Nation had an important part in the history of immigration to California, beginning with 1849, is shown by the fact that the name “Cherokee” can be found in the records and on the maps of that period, clear across the western half of the continent. The trail from Pueblo, Colorado, to Fort Bridger, Wyoming, via Bridger’s Pass, followed by the famous Overland Mail in 1862, was well known as the “Cherokee Trail.”2This was approximately the same route fol lowed by the Cherokees of Brown’s party. The former town of Latham, Colorado, on the Cache La Poudre River, an important point on the Overland Mail Route, was first called “Cherokee City.” Present day maps still carry the name of “Cherokee Park” in Northern Colorado, while those of Western Wyoming show the town of “Cherokee” on the Union Pacific Railroad. Both of these places were in the vicinity of the old Cherokee Trail. In 1850, there was the “Cherokee Cutoff,” a short route from the Upper Humboldt River to the Feather River country in North Central California.3 There was also the mining camp or town of “Cherokee” in the northern gold field near the Feather River.4 Thus, the journal of John Lowery Brown is valuable and interesting as an original record both in the history of immigration to California and in the history of the Cherokees. It is a rare docum ent that helps to tell Oklahoma’s part in the story of the mirage of the Golden West, the great gold rush of more than three quarters of a century ago.
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Foreword Annotations
1 John Lowery Brown was the son of David and Rachel (Lowery) Orr Brown. Rachel Brown was the fifth child and youngest daughter of George and Lucy Benge Lowery. George Lowery born about 1770, was one half Cherokee and Scotch. He was town chief of Willstown in the Cherokee Nation East and also a leading citizen after the immigration to the West. He died in 1852. David Brown was three-fourths Cherokee, the son of John and Sarah Webber Brown. David’s sister, Catherine Brown, noted for her beautiful character and personality, was the first Christian convert among the Cherokees, at Brainerd Mission, Tennessee, in 1818. After her death, a book “ Memoir of Catherine Brown” was published in her memory by the American Board at Boston in 1824. David attended both Cornwall Mission School, in Connecticut, and Andover Theological Seminary, in Massachusetts. After his return to the Cherokee Nation East, he was prominent in religious and educational work among his people. For a time he lived among the Western Cherokees in Arkansas and clerked in the store of his half brother, Walter Webber, who later moved up the Arkansas River and settled what is now known as Webber Falls, in Muskogee County. Just before Sequoyah made known his invention of the Cherokee alphabet, David Brown and his father-in-law, George Lowery, completed a Cherokee spelling book in English characters. In 1826, they were both appointed by the General Council of the Cherokee Nation to make the first translation of the Cherokee laws and the New Testament in the Cherokee language using Sequoyah’s alphabet. After John Lowery Brown returned to the Cherokee Nation from California, he and his wife, Ann E. (Schrimsher) Brown, made their home at Fort Gibson. Their second son, Martin R. Brown, was born in 1858. In 1887, Martin R. Brown married Miss Nannie Adair. He was a successful business man and prominent in educational circles in his nation, elected clerk of Illinois District in 1881, member of the National Board of Education in 1886, and superintendent of the Male Seminary in 1894. Mr. and Mrs. Brown were the parents of Mrs. Gist who is the namesake of her great-aunt, Catherine Brown. She was married to Mr. Emmet W. Gist, of Oklahoma City, in 1915. They are the parents of one daughter, Dorothy, who graduates from Classen Highschool, Oklahoma City, this year (1934).
2 Grant Foreman, Early Trails Through Oklahoma, Chronicles of Oklahoma. Vol. III. No. 2, pp. 110-2; LeRoy R. Hafen, The Overland Mail. (Arthur II. Clark Co. 1926), p. 230; Captain Randolph B. Marcey, The Prairie Traveler, p. 4. Captain Marcy’s description of the “Cherokee Trail” in 1859 was as follows: “ Another road which takes its departure from Fort Smith and passes through the Cherokee country, is called the ‘Cherokee Trail.’ It crosses Grand River at Fort Gibson, and runs a little north of west, to the Verdigris River, thence up the valley of this stream on the north side for 80 miles, when it crosses the river, and, taking a northwest course, strikes the Arkansas River near old Fort Mann, on the Santa Fe trail; thence it passes near the base of Pike’s Peak, and follow’s down Cherry Creek, from its source to its confluence with the South Platte, and from thence over the mountains into Utah, and on to California via Fort Bridger and Salt Lake City.”
3Kimbell Webster, The Gold Seekers of ’49, (Standard Book Company, Manchester, N.H., 1917 ), p. 98.
4 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History o f California, Vol. VI, p. 368.
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Citation
Wright, Muriel H. "The Journal of John Lowery Brown, of the Cherokee Nation En Route to California in 1850." The Chronicles of Oklahoma XII, no. 2 (June 1934): 177-213.
Transcribed from the Original and annotated by Muriel H. Wright
[Flyleaf]
JOURNAL KEPT BY J. L. ...
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