In recent weeks I have so often opened this program with critical remarks\u00a0about our lavish government spending, I want to sound tonight a more cheerful\u00a0economic note. U. S. News and World Report assures us that the cost of living\u00a0is not likely to rise much in the next few months. Milk may be up a cent a\u00a0quart, bread may cost a cent a loaf more. But meat is as high as, it is likely\u00a0to go. In fact by winter pork and chicken will be plentiful and a bit cheaper.\u00a0Shoes are selling slow at present prices, the new prices on woolen suits are not\u00a0as high as expected, and cotton products of all kinds are so abundant that their\u00a0prices are not likely to advance.<\/p>\n
So keep your chin up. Our dollar may still be worth 50 cents by mid-winter.<\/p>\n
Now let us get S0lyman Heath on toward his California goal.<\/p>\n
As might be expected, good news or good traveling owned Solyman’s spirits,\u00a0Just as bad traveling, bad food and bad news depressed them and turned his\u00a0thoughts toward home. On July 25 he wrote: “We learned that San Francisco is\u00a0blockaded by Smith to keep out the foreigners, and there is a good deal of\u00a0trouble 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\u00a0August 28 reads: “Last night some discouraging news from California spread\u00a0through the camp, which had perceptible effect on all of us. Have I come so far\u00a0from my home and loved ones for naught?” Then on the very next day Solyman wrote:<\/p>\n
“Tonight we had some reliable good news, which has had a marked effect. Such joy\u00a0I have seldom seen. Only two days later the news was mixed: “We have received”, wrote Heath, “both favorable and unfavorable reports from California\u00a0today. Plenty of gold, out sickness devastating.”<\/p>\n
It was natural that a man from Maine, where springs and streams and lakes\u00a0supply abundant water, should hays something to say about the lack of that\u00a0blessed commodity on the western plains. On May 18, only two weeks out of Independence,\u00a0Solyman wrote: “We have traveled today over apparently limitless, but\u00a0waterless prairie. At last we came to Bull Creek, where near two Indian lodges\u00a0we found a fine spring, and took what we wanted to quench our thirst. No New\u00a0England man eyes understood the worth of water until crossing the plains.”<\/p>\n
On September 9, as they came to the Nevada desert and passed the horrible\u00a0Sink, Solyman let us know how much he disliked tt, in no uncertain terms. “The\u00a0earth is widely covered with a white crust”, he wrote. “It Is entirely destitute\u00a0of vegetation. Everything around us looks I ike a dried up lake. Here we are\u00a0without a drop of water for animals or men. What water there Is contains huge\u00a0quantities of salt. We travel two hours, then rest, and so continue until we\u00a0reach drinkable water, which is said to be 25 miles distant as I write these lines.”<\/p>\n
That was September 9. Two days later Solyman was able to say: ”We hays at\u00a0last passed the 60 miles of desert. All day long we had no drinkable water. At\u00a0five o’clock we reached some wells, which had a pittance, but It was salt and\u00a0sulphurous. Both passengers and animals have suffered intensely from thirst,\u00a0made worse because the day was terribly hot.”<\/p>\n
What relief Solyman and his company must hays felt when they came at last\u00a0to the Carson RI ys r.\u00a0Besides thirst and tasteless food and frequent lack of grass for the horses\u00a0and oxen, there were the repeated passages of hills and mountains. After having\u00a0made the difficult ascent and descent of the South Pass of the A:>ckies, how discouraged\u00a0the emigrants must have felt when they found crossing the Sierras even\u00a0harder.<\/p>\n
On September 24 Solyman talked with two men who had passed the canyon of\u00a0the Sierras and had returned. They told him it is a very hazardous passage.,\u00a0much harder to make with wagons than any of the heights In the Rockies. On the\u00a0next day Solyman’s party got three miles into the canyon and there had to camp.\u00a0”We could not get through”, Solyman recorded. “With the greater part of the\u00a0train we could go only three miles.” But on the next day they did get through\u00a0what Solyman agreed were the worst p laces he had ever seen for wagons. “We have\u00a0ascended steep hills flied with boulders,” he wrote, “the mules often tumbling\u00a0down. We passed over ledges which looked formidable even for a foot passenger.\u00a0We managed to get over the first ridge with loss of only two wagons. The whole\u00a0canyon Is strewn with the wrecks of wagons, harnesses and dead animals. Never\u00a0do I wish to go over that grollld again.”<\/p>\n
But they were not over the worst of it yet. On the next day Solyman wrote:\u00a0“Another ridge now lies before us, specked with snow. We are now twenty miles\u00a0from the grand summit, to reach which will cost much patience and tol n’ And\u00a0plenty of tolI they did have. They lost three more wagons, one man broke his\u00a0leg, four mules were killed, before they made the passage, less than a mile long,\u00a0to the summit, where the waters on the other side flowed to the Pacific.<\/p>\n
If Solyman had read Keats, which few Americans had in 1849, he might well\u00a0have compared himself with the discoverer who first saw the blue Pacific from\u00a0the peak in Darien.\u00a0One would think they would now find easier traveling, but not so. On the\u00a0very day after they found the waters flowing westward, Solyman tells us:<\/p>\n
“Reached the most difficult ridge we have yet encountered ~- five miles of the\u00a0roughest climb. Wagons repeatedly upset, two broken into kindling. We passed\u00a0snow banks 15 feet deep, but so hard packed that the heels of my boots would not\u00a0make half the impression on it that they made on the earth. At last we reached\u00a0the western s lope and once more camped on grass.”<\/p>\n
Heath had no encounters with Indians on the war path. Most of the Indians\u00a0were friendly, and often they passed through known Indian country without seeing\u00a0a sing I e red man. Only ten days out of Independence they saw two Indian lodges I b<\/em>ut did not go near them. Two days later they camped In Pottawatomle Indian\u00a0territory, but saw no Indians. On the next day, however, Heath reported: “Th1i”ee\u00a0Indians were prowling about our camp last night, probably to steal horses.”<\/p>\n By the first of June they were in Pawnee country, but according to Heath,\u00a0“No Pawnees have yet showed themselves. It Is understood they are at war with\u00a0the Comanches.”\u00a0On June 3rd they got a scare. They were overtaken by another company, who\u00a0reported a man had been found scalped. A few hours later, Heath’s own company\u00a0found a body In the same condition.\u00a0On June 8 Heath wrote: ”We have had no trouble with Indians, but we met\u00a0another emigrant train that had exchanged shots with Pawnees, who stole some of\u00a0their 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\u00a0personal harm to the travelers.<\/p>\n When they reached Fort Laramie in Wyoming, Heath was able to record: “We\u00a0have seen no sign of Indians for the past week. It is hard to believe we are in\u00a0Indian country.” They had passed through the vast Sioux territory without seeing\u00a0a Sioux. But In Nevada they encountered the friendly Shoshones. Heath says\u00a0of them: “Our camp was visited today by Indians of the Shoshone tribe; not grave\u00a0and taciturn like the other Indians we have seen, but volatile and laughing.”<\/p>\n Heath was so interested in certain Indian customs that he recorded them at\u00a0length. On May 27 he wrote: “Today we encountered the grave of an Indian chief.\u00a0The burial place is fenced around and covered with logs. The body does not appear\u00a0to be under the earth at all, but is placed in an easy, reclining posture,\u00a0with the face toward the setting sun. The body is covered allover with cloth,\u00a0and a bow and arrow rest at its side.”<\/p>\n The account on June 22 is even more detailed: ‘~e saw today how the Sioux\u00a0dispose of their dead~ In a large oak tree, forty feet from the ground, was a\u00a0wicker basket, and in it a body with all its property. There were many ornaments,\u00a0and what was rather strange, a tin dipper. The basket was covered with\u00a0buffalo skins, all nicely painted, and showed a becoming respect for the dead.\u00a0Such trees the Indians never cut down, and their indignation is aroused if they\u00a0fi nd the trees have been disturbed by emigrants. The trapper of whom we bought\u00a0some skins thought a white man had married a Sioux and that we had passed today\u00a0the tree where her corpse was elevated. Some foolish travelers had violated\u00a0the sanctity of the grave by cutting through the skins that covered the remains,\u00a0and it is by no means improbable that some innocent white man will lose his life\u00a0for this violation.”<\/p>\n Every American school child, though he or she may never have seen an Indian,\u00a0knows how Indian babies are carried, but the practice was so new to Solyman Heath\u00a0that he recorded it with great astonishment. ”We saw two squaws riding on one\u00a0pony. They carried a baby about four months old. It was tied firmly toe board,\u00a0laced up tight In some kind of skin, and hung to one side of the saddle. The\u00a0board was so arranged that the child could be quieted by a motion, when, like\u00a0our children, it began to cry. It was the most singular contrivance I ever saw\u00a0and looked mighty uncomfortable.”<\/p>\n 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,\u00a0but events of this kind that happened a hundred years ago are difficult to reconstruct\u00a0unless there is a carefully written record.\u00a0It was on October 7 — five months and two days after leaving Independence\u00a0that Heath reached the upper diggins in California. This is his record:\u00a0”We reached the upper diggins about noon, where we found most of our people who\u00a0had gone on ahead of the wagons from the Carson River. I got dinner at a tavern\u00a0of the poorest kind, but it went well, for I sat in a chair and at a table with\u00a0a cloth on it for the first time in five months. had some good bread, apple\u00a0sauce, a pickle, and coffee — but at the high price of one dollar. The valley\u00a0is full of ca””s, and all folks are busy digging. Some of our folks have already done remarkably well.”<\/p>\n The next day Heath was at a p lace called Weaver Creek, where he found a\u00a0good boarding house at three dollars a day. Of the yellow metal he wrote: “Gold\u00a0is plenty, but to get It is work of rather disagreeable kind.”\u00a0Evidently the wagon train was stili going deeper into California to the\u00a0lower gold fields, for on October 12 he had a rather trying experience. He\u00a0wrote: “I walked ahead of the train to the Jobnnon town and got my dinner.\u00a0There I found three of our men, packed with their bedding, saying the train had\u00a0gone the other way and left us in the lurch. Nothing to do but go ahead on foot.”<\/p>\n But on the next day Solyman had hitch-hiker’s luck, even though the day,\u00a0Friday, the thirteenth of October, was ominous for all superstitious people. It\u00a0was the day when Solyman wrote the last entry in the journal. It reads: “Succeeded\u00a0In getting a ride most of the way down to the city. Found the city with\u00a0no place to lodge. Boarding is high, lodging higher, and as yet I have not been\u00a0able to find any of our folks. Drank strongly of brandy and found my legs a\u00a0little better.”\u00a0What was the Mormon town to which Solyman walked ahead? What was the city\u00a0which be, finally reached? Was ItSacramantoj was it more likely one of those\u00a0mushroom gold towns that had the word City attached as part of Its name; or was\u00a0It perhaps San Francisco Itself?<\/p>\n And, biggest question of all, why does the diary end here? There are several\u00a0blank pages left In the book. In fact just under the entry for October 13\u00a0appear the words “Saturday, October 14”, but nothing else. Old Solyman start\u00a0to wrt fa something there, and why did he stop?\u00a0What success did Solyman have In California? How soon did he return to\u00a0Maine? These are questions we hope some day to answer, and if we succeed we\u00a0shall share those answers with you.<\/p>\n Year: 1951<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #119, broadcast on October 21, 1951<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[786,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}