Wyoming

I’m reading a book on the history of Wyoming. (T. A. Larson. History of Wyoming. Dr. Larson was the foremost authority on Wyoming history). Actually, I have probably read all I’m going to read – I was mainly interested in the early white contact and entrance. Interestingly, this book has very little information on the pre-contact Indians, dismissing them thus, “Not much is known about the natives of the area before a.d. 1800. From what is known, however, it can be said with some confidence that . . . there were probably no more than 10,000 nomadic Indians when the white man came.”

What an interesting picture we have of early Wyoming. Apparently, the fur traders or mountain men were the first white men in the area: “Not a hole or corner in the vast wilderness of the ‘Far West’ but has been ransacked by these hardy men . . . and these alone are the hardy pioneers who have paved the way for the settlement of the western country.” (F. Ruxton, 1847). A truly hardy and intrepid bunch of men.

“The mountain men established an image of the free roaming individual who lived in the wilderness, unhampered by the restraints of civilization. The image sometimes outran the reality – mountain men were out to make money, after all, and they depended on civilized society for many of their needs, including guns and liquor. Nevertheless, more than the cowboy, the pioneer settler, or any other frontiersman, the mountain men achieved an independence from civilization. Here he is as depicted by one writer:

‘The mountain man was almost Indian-colored from exposure to the sun. His hair hung upon his shoulders. He was bearded. Next to his skin he wore a red flannel loincloth. His outer clothes were of buckskin, fringed at all the seams. The jacket sometimes reached to the knee over tight, wrinkled leggings. His feet were covered by moccasins made of deer or buffalo leather. Around his waist was a leather belt into which he thrust his flintlock pistols, his knife for skinning or scalping, and his shingling hatchet . . . Peering vividly out from under his low crowned hat of rough wool, he was an American original as hard as the hardest thing that could happen to him.’” I like that last sentence!

But then, when the rest of the white men came “Wyoming was a thoroughfare rather than a destination.”

“Wyoming proved more attractive as a thoroughfare than a destination. No one wanted to live in Wyoming – they just wanted to pass over the ground because it led somewhere else. Settlers looked at bare Nebraska and saw future cornfields and feedlots. They looked at a Texas terrain of flat, bare plains and envisioned enormous herds of cattle. They even saw promise in the sterile slopes of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. But Wyoming – why, a fine place for a road to Oregon.” I love this last sentence as well!

“The great thoroughfare through central Wyoming has been known by several names besides ‘Platte River Road’ since the 1840s – Oregon Trail, California Trail, and the Mormon Trail. Somewhere between 350,000 and 400,000 emigrants, most of them men, moved west between 1841 and 1868 along this thoroughfare...” (55,000 in 1850 and 50,000 in 1852 alone)

This is an incredible number! Every time I read this and think about it I picture it as a tsunami of white people. Rock Hill has a population of 70,000. In one year almost the entire city of Rock Hill passed through Wyoming! And then again the next year and the next!! That boggles my mind. I had never really thought about it, but the West advertised, “The settlers on the West Coast were aware that the country  would really develop only with increased numbers of Americans to join them. They waged a campaign not only to attract more settlers, but to ensure that Oregon and California became states.”

“Travel along the Oregon Trail, at least in Wyoming, was not so much dangerous as it was monotonous.” As one traveler, T.S. Kenderline, put it in 1858, Wyoming is ‘A gloomy, God-forsaken country.’

“Desert countries are notoriously cold at night; so it should surprise no one that Matthew Field on the Green River on August 16, 1843, wrote, ‘Cold as January! ice at 6 and mosquitos at 8 a.m.’ ”

What confusion existed as ‘civilization’ came to this wilderness! This is how Margaret Carrington described the Ft. Laramie store, “the long counter . . . was a scene of confusion . . . Indians dressed and half dressed and undressed . . . mingled with the soldiers, teamsters, emigrants, speculators, half-breeds, and interpreters. Here cups of rice, sugar, coffee, or flour were being emptied into the looped-up skirts or blankets of a squaw; and there some tall warrior grimacing delightfully as he grasped and sucked his long sticks of peppermint candy... The room was redolent of cheese and herring…and smoke… To all…Mr. Bullock…gave kind and patient attention, and his clerks seemed equally ready and capable, talking Sioux, Cheyenne or English, just as each case came to hand.” What a scene! Some trading posts were not so friendly to Indians. But you get the picture.

I am impressed with the mobility of the people in a day when there were no cars or planes and even before trains. First, that people would walk from the east coast to the west coast! And then, once in Wyoming, they thought nothing of going to California or Oregon, then returning, or going back east for a visit, then returning. On foot or horseback! Such travel seems to have been common, no big deal. To me, driving 4 hours to Edisto is a big deal!

And what is also amazing, with so few people in such a big territory, they constantly bumped into each other! I know people who live here in Rock Hill that I never see!

Just a few thoughts from my reading about Wyoming. I am fascinated with the West, the Indians, and the earliest forays of whites into this “wilderness.”  I won’t keep you in suspense and force you to seek and read the book – Wyoming finally became a state :-)