Radio Script #119
Little Talks On Common Things
October 21, 1951
In recent weeks I have so often opened this program with critical remarks about our lavish government spending, I want to sound tonight a more cheerful economic note. U. S. News and World Report assures us that the cost of living is not likely to rise much in the next few months. Milk may be up a cent a quart, bread may cost a cent a loaf more. But meat is as high as, it is likely to go. In fact by winter pork and chicken will be plentiful and a bit cheaper. Shoes are selling slow at present prices, the new prices on woolen suits are not as high as expected, and cotton products of all kinds are so abundant that their prices are not likely to advance.
So keep your chin up. Our dollar may still be worth 50 cents by mid-winter.
Now let us get S0lyman Heath on toward his California goal.
As might be expected, good news or good traveling owned Solyman’s spirits, Just as bad traveling, bad food and bad news depressed them and turned his thoughts toward home. On July 25 he wrote: “We learned that San Francisco is blockaded by Smith to keep out the foreigners, and there is a good deal of trouble with them in the diggings. All around our camp is desolation and ever lasting barrenness. Thoughts of home constantly with me today.” The entry for August 28 reads: “Last night some discouraging news from California spread through the camp, which had perceptible effect on all of us. Have I come so far from my home and loved ones for naught?” Then on the very next day Solyman wrote:
“Tonight we had some reliable good news, which has had a marked effect. Such joy I have seldom seen. Only two days later the news was mixed: “We have received”, wrote Heath, “both favorable and unfavorable reports from California today. Plenty of gold, out sickness devastating.”
It was natural that a man from Maine, where springs and streams and lakes supply abundant water, should hays something to say about the lack of that blessed commodity on the western plains. On May 18, only two weeks out of Independence, Solyman wrote: “We have traveled today over apparently limitless, but waterless prairie. At last we came to Bull Creek, where near two Indian lodges we found a fine spring, and took what we wanted to quench our thirst. No New England man eyes understood the worth of water until crossing the plains.”
On September 9, as they came to the Nevada desert and passed the horrible Sink, Solyman let us know how much he disliked tt, in no uncertain terms. “The earth is widely covered with a white crust”, he wrote. “It Is entirely destitute of vegetation. Everything around us looks I ike a dried up lake. Here we are without a drop of water for animals or men. What water there Is contains huge quantities of salt. We travel two hours, then rest, and so continue until we reach drinkable water, which is said to be 25 miles distant as I write these lines.”
That was September 9. Two days later Solyman was able to say: ”We hays at last passed the 60 miles of desert. All day long we had no drinkable water. At five o’clock we reached some wells, which had a pittance, but It was salt and sulphurous. Both passengers and animals have suffered intensely from thirst, made worse because the day was terribly hot.”
What relief Solyman and his company must hays felt when they came at last to the Carson RI ys r. Besides thirst and tasteless food and frequent lack of grass for the horses and oxen, there were the repeated passages of hills and mountains. After having made the difficult ascent and descent of the South Pass of the A:>ckies, how discouraged the emigrants must have felt when they found crossing the Sierras even harder.
On September 24 Solyman talked with two men who had passed the canyon of the Sierras and had returned. They told him it is a very hazardous passage., much harder to make with wagons than any of the heights In the Rockies. On the next day Solyman’s party got three miles into the canyon and there had to camp. ”We could not get through”, Solyman recorded. “With the greater part of the train we could go only three miles.” But on the next day they did get through what Solyman agreed were the worst p laces he had ever seen for wagons. “We have ascended steep hills flied with boulders,” he wrote, “the mules often tumbling down. We passed over ledges which looked formidable even for a foot passenger. We managed to get over the first ridge with loss of only two wagons. The whole canyon Is strewn with the wrecks of wagons, harnesses and dead animals. Never do I wish to go over that grollld again.”
But they were not over the worst of it yet. On the next day Solyman wrote: “Another ridge now lies before us, specked with snow. We are now twenty miles from the grand summit, to reach which will cost much patience and tol n’ And plenty of tolI they did have. They lost three more wagons, one man broke his leg, four mules were killed, before they made the passage, less than a mile long, to the summit, where the waters on the other side flowed to the Pacific.
If Solyman had read Keats, which few Americans had in 1849, he might well have compared himself with the discoverer who first saw the blue Pacific from the peak in Darien. One would think they would now find easier traveling, but not so. On the very day after they found the waters flowing westward, Solyman tells us:
“Reached the most difficult ridge we have yet encountered ~- five miles of the roughest climb. Wagons repeatedly upset, two broken into kindling. We passed snow banks 15 feet deep, but so hard packed that the heels of my boots would not make half the impression on it that they made on the earth. At last we reached the western s lope and once more camped on grass.”
Heath had no encounters with Indians on the war path. Most of the Indians were friendly, and often they passed through known Indian country without seeing a sing I e red man. Only ten days out of Independence they saw two Indian lodges I but did not go near them. Two days later they camped In Pottawatomle Indian territory, but saw no Indians. On the next day, however, Heath reported: “Th1i”ee Indians were prowling about our camp last night, probably to steal horses.”
By the first of June they were in Pawnee country, but according to Heath, “No Pawnees have yet showed themselves. It Is understood they are at war with the Comanches.” On June 3rd they got a scare. They were overtaken by another company, who reported a man had been found scalped. A few hours later, Heath’s own company found a body In the same condition. On June 8 Heath wrote: ”We have had no trouble with Indians, but we met another emigrant train that had exchanged shots with Pawnees, who stole some of their oxen.” In fact, when the Indians were hostile, they seemed bent on stampedfng “horses and cattle in order to get the animals, rather than intending any personal harm to the travelers.
When they reached Fort Laramie in Wyoming, Heath was able to record: “We have seen no sign of Indians for the past week. It is hard to believe we are in Indian country.” They had passed through the vast Sioux territory without seeing a Sioux. But In Nevada they encountered the friendly Shoshones. Heath says of them: “Our camp was visited today by Indians of the Shoshone tribe; not grave and taciturn like the other Indians we have seen, but volatile and laughing.”
Heath was so interested in certain Indian customs that he recorded them at length. On May 27 he wrote: “Today we encountered the grave of an Indian chief. The burial place is fenced around and covered with logs. The body does not appear to be under the earth at all, but is placed in an easy, reclining posture, with the face toward the setting sun. The body is covered allover with cloth, and a bow and arrow rest at its side.”
The account on June 22 is even more detailed: ‘~e saw today how the Sioux dispose of their dead~ In a large oak tree, forty feet from the ground, was a wicker basket, and in it a body with all its property. There were many ornaments, and what was rather strange, a tin dipper. The basket was covered with buffalo skins, all nicely painted, and showed a becoming respect for the dead. Such trees the Indians never cut down, and their indignation is aroused if they fi nd the trees have been disturbed by emigrants. The trapper of whom we bought some skins thought a white man had married a Sioux and that we had passed today the tree where her corpse was elevated. Some foolish travelers had violated the sanctity of the grave by cutting through the skins that covered the remains, and it is by no means improbable that some innocent white man will lose his life for this violation.”
Every American school child, though he or she may never have seen an Indian, knows how Indian babies are carried, but the practice was so new to Solyman Heath that he recorded it with great astonishment. ”We saw two squaws riding on one pony. They carried a baby about four months old. It was tied firmly toe board, laced up tight In some kind of skin, and hung to one side of the saddle. The board was so arranged that the child could be quieted by a motion, when, like our children, it began to cry. It was the most singular contrivance I ever saw and looked mighty uncomfortable.”
Solyman Heath’s journal ends so abruptly that it leaves many questions unanswered. With the help of Walter Heath, I shall try to find some of the answers, but events of this kind that happened a hundred years ago are difficult to reconstruct unless there is a carefully written record. It was on October 7 — five months and two days after leaving Independence that Heath reached the upper diggins in California. This is his record: ”We reached the upper diggins about noon, where we found most of our people who had gone on ahead of the wagons from the Carson River. I got dinner at a tavern of the poorest kind, but it went well, for I sat in a chair and at a table with a cloth on it for the first time in five months. had some good bread, apple sauce, a pickle, and coffee — but at the high price of one dollar. The valley is full of ca””s, and all folks are busy digging. Some of our folks have already done remarkably well.”
The next day Heath was at a p lace called Weaver Creek, where he found a good boarding house at three dollars a day. Of the yellow metal he wrote: “Gold is plenty, but to get It is work of rather disagreeable kind.” Evidently the wagon train was stili going deeper into California to the lower gold fields, for on October 12 he had a rather trying experience. He wrote: “I walked ahead of the train to the Jobnnon town and got my dinner. There I found three of our men, packed with their bedding, saying the train had gone the other way and left us in the lurch. Nothing to do but go ahead on foot.”
But on the next day Solyman had hitch-hiker’s luck, even though the day, Friday, the thirteenth of October, was ominous for all superstitious people. It was the day when Solyman wrote the last entry in the journal. It reads: “Succeeded In getting a ride most of the way down to the city. Found the city with no place to lodge. Boarding is high, lodging higher, and as yet I have not been able to find any of our folks. Drank strongly of brandy and found my legs a little better.” What was the Mormon town to which Solyman walked ahead? What was the city which be, finally reached? Was ItSacramantoj was it more likely one of those mushroom gold towns that had the word City attached as part of Its name; or was It perhaps San Francisco Itself?
And, biggest question of all, why does the diary end here? There are several blank pages left In the book. In fact just under the entry for October 13 appear the words “Saturday, October 14”, but nothing else. Old Solyman start to wrt fa something there, and why did he stop? What success did Solyman have In California? How soon did he return to Maine? These are questions we hope some day to answer, and if we succeed we shall share those answers with you.
Year: 1951