We did not take much heed of Mother’s advice, it has to be said. None of the young men appeared to have danger in them. We were more fearful of strange beings, barely human, hiding in the forests far ahead of us on our migration. The Indians in the west were the real bogeys in our minds. They would be wild and murderous, unlike the shadowy and apparently harmless tribes we had glimpsed thus far. There were still stories told around the campfires of what those unknown savages might wish to do to us. But these tales - always told with relish, like ghost stories - lost power with every passing day, once we set out. It was said they hacked off the scalps of the people they killed with their spears and arrows, and tied them onto long stakes. They favoured fair-haired victims, and were aghast at men with beards, since they could not grow any themselves. My father, even when still in our comfortable city home, would shake his head and smile and dismiss the stories as nothing more than ghoulish fairytales designed to frighten children and horses. As we moved westwards, we met many people who had actually dealt with Indians and learned some of their ways. There began to be hints of regret in our hearts at the inevitable destruction of their camps and villages, as they were forced to make way for the white settlers. In Saint Louis I met a woman named Sarah, whose sister had travelled in one of the first wagon trains. The sister had written long letters about her experiences.
‘The Indians rely on the buffalo for almost everything,’ Sarah reported. ‘Hides for their tents and garments and foot coverings. The sinews are used as thread and the bones are their spades. And meat, of course. They wear the horns in their head-dresses. My husband believes we will most rapidly subdue the savages by slaughtering these beasts. It seems a terrible destruction of a noble creature, but James is convinced it is God’s great plan that this should be done.’
In those early weeks of our journey we saw no buffalo at all, nor did we glimpse an Indian – unless Lizzie could be believed. ‘They are all in the city, smoking pipes and selling furs,’ said my father, when I made a remark to this effect. We had indeed seen a wide variety of natives during our preparatory weeks in Saint Louis, and then again in our final pause in Westport, but somehow I had not counted them as true Indians. They had no feather head-dresses or quivers full of arrows, but sat about in groups watching us, or arguing amongst themselves.
There was a great oddness to the absence of proper place names along the trail we followed. It increased my curiosity as to how we measured our progress and what it was that dictated the route. I knew there was a great range of mountains ahead, with limited opportunity for getting over them with wagons. The early explorers had charted the best crossing places and created maps for the guidance of migrants. There were tales of much quicker cutoffs, known to the mountain men and trappers, as well as Indians, of course. Great arguments had been known to develop between different parties in a train, in which one side favoured the known track, whilst the other wished to place their trust in a charismatic guide who promised a faster easier journey.
Nothing of this sort happened to us. We had a scout in possession of a map depicting the rivers, hills, rock formations that had been named thirty or more years earlier by the first white men to encounter them. My father was content to follow wiser men who fell naturally into the role of leader. He had little interest in taking risks or venturing into territory that held unknown dangers. The trek was safe enough, he insisted, if we followed the established way. Our greatest task was to avoid accidents, conserve food and water, and stay with the larger group. ‘In that way, we can be as comfortable as if we were on a Sunday School outing,’ he said, many a time.
But Reuben had sharp knives and Lizzie had a crooked ankle, and everyone had rifles that they hardly knew how to use. The Dutch ovens were heavy and hot when full of the evening stew. The fires sometimes spat burning twigs onto dry grass and set a blaze going. Snakes would bite an unwary leg and a mule could kick hard enough to kill. Oxen grew tired or sick and their wagon would fall behind. A day would be lost before anyone knew it, and the catching up tested tempers and feet beyond endurance. By the end of our first month, all these things were well understood and the hazards of our adventure were no longer matters for laughter.
My grandmother walked as sturdily as everyone else, kicking her blue cotton skirts in her own distinctive way, so she made a swirling blue cloud from a distance, always easy to recognise. She had befriended another old woman from a different party, for want of anyone of her own age in ours, and they walked together, not speaking much, but watching for their own families with small sharp eyes. Both had crinkled faces, shadowed by wide bonnet brims, and brown hands. The other grandma came from Scotland when she was in her thirties, and still spoke with the same accent she had grown up with. On all sides we heard a great variety of pronunciations, from the Irish, Cornish, Scots and Londoners. Fanny would mimic them all, speaking the same word in five or six different ways. She caught them exactly, which seemed to be a kind of magic to me and the others.
It was a similar talent that enabled her to sing more sweetly than anyone I had ever heard. Her voice soared like a lark, warbling the old Irish airs that both our parents would choose as their favourites when there was a singing time. My sister never forgot the words to a song, even though she could barely recall her Bible passages or the names of the other migrants.
Our party of four families totalled thirty-nine souls. Eight Collinses, nine Bricewoods, ten Franklins and no fewer than twelve Tennants. The last-named had two brand new wagons drawn by three yoke of oxen apiece, packed tight with their goods and youngsters. They had a true patriarch, in the form of the grandfather, Mr James Tennant. His two sons and their wives had seven children between them, which was no great number, but they were all large, many of them with hair the colour of a ripe apricot. The older son, Luke, was the father of Abel. The younger, Barty, had twin boys, about five years in age, who had such energy that my mother would sigh just to look at them.
In addition, Mr Franklin, who had come from Indiana, carried fifty young apple trees in clay pots, which occupied a good deal of his time and attention. The Bricewood family consisted of the senior couple, and seven children – Benjamin, Henry, and five assorted youngsters, one of whom was a darkie boy aged about six, and apparently adopted by the Bricewoods as a baby. He was named Joel and showed no awareness of his difference to the others.
Mr Bricewood and the senior Mr Tennant had both expected to be leader of the party. While we were still at Westport, their dickering began. Every party required a single figurehead, where the ultimate decision-making lay, and whose name was given to the group for easy reference. The train comprised eighteen such parties, although those at the front never had any dealings with those at the rear. Immediately ahead of us was the Wilson party, which seemed to have more than its share of strong young men and very few girls.
The choice of leader was conducted with a jocular goodwill, by and large. Mr Bricewood was the younger by seven or eight years, but he was less sharp in his wits. Mr Tennant was the more prosperous, his wagons newmade, his oxen hale and powerful. He had five fine horses, besides. We had just the single horse, there for back-up in the event that we might need to send a rider for help of some sort. Or for use as a pack animal, if for some unimaginable reason we were forced to abandon the wagon and continue with a bare minimum of dry meat and a single tent. My father had been a good rider, back in Ireland, but Reuben had no skill at riding. While some families had brought several horses with them, my father preferred to purchase half a dozen steers to come along with us.
In the end it came to a vote, with all men over the age of eighteen participating. There was Mr Franklin and his two sons, Allen and Jude; my father and Reuben – whose birthday had taken place on 20th April, which made him the youngest to be allowed to vote; Mr Bricewood’s son Benjamin; Mr Fields and finally Mr Tennant’s two sons, Barty and Luke. Thus nine out of thirty-one individuals made the choice, leaving the many women and children out of the calculation entirely. My grandmother made comment on this, without rancour. ‘’Tis men’s business,’ said my mother, with a hint of reproach. ‘What for would we want to be getting involved?’
‘For our own safety’s sake,’ came the tart reply. ‘If they choose a man incapable of the task, we could all die in a snowdrift.’
‘No-one’s going to die,’ my mother told her, and indeed it seemed a wild fancy to think we could ever follow a man into any sort of danger.
‘I pray you’re right,’ said the old lady. ‘And I pray they have the good sense to select the right man.’
It was no secret that Mr Tennant would have been her choice, if she had been asked. No much short of her own age, he had paused to speak to her when we first got to Westport, doffing his hat and making it clear that he admired her for her spirit of adventure. Fanny and I had heard them sighing over the headstrong young people of the times, and their notions that good things would come easily to them.
Mr Tennant won, in any case, which was gratifying to Grandma. He was senior in more ways than one. His grandfather had been a slave trader, his great-uncle a ship’s captain carrying the captives from Africa. His father settled in North Carolina and had a post in the state government. Mr Tennant himself was a third son, always eager for exploration. In his time he had been to Chihuahua, Pike’s Peak, Niagara Falls and many other romantic places. I knew this from listening to him one evening in Westport, where he had given a demonstration of trail life, arranging us all in a circle around a flickering fire and telling us the story of his travels. There had been other families present, and I believe he expected to be leader of a far larger party than the one he ended up with. His cousin, he told us, was a wild mountain man, who knew the crossing places, the climate, the nature of the different Indian tribes, and the finer points of fur trapping. ‘I spent my twentieth year accompanying him in Dakota country,’ he boasted. ‘Many years before the Clark and Lewis expedition. My eternal regret is that I let my ambitions drop when I was young, and allowed myself to be diverted into business in Massachusetts for my prime years.’
I kept my eyes on his face, trying to wriggle myself into his head, where there were assuredly wondrous pictures stored. I could feel his self-reproach for taking the easier way as a young man. He was a tall figure with broad shoulders and large hands. He seemed fit and strong despite his age, which we calculated had to be close to seventy. He had a small grand-daughter at his side, now and then resting a hand on her head, or lightly patting her cheek, as he told his tales. He appeared to be a gentle man, and I had difficulty in imagining him cutting the throat of a trapped beaver or fox. Perhaps, I thought, he had romanticised the life of a mountain man, during those forty-some years that had passed since he lived with his uncle in the wilderness. Perhaps he had known it was too harsh, too dangerous and lonely for a man of his character. He relished human company and was a natural entertainer. Mr Bricewood, we discovered, would have been a better disciplinarian, and thus perhaps a better leader. But on that first day, when the selection was made, we none of us thought it of much significance. A small party in a great train, with not the slightest sign of trouble – it was little more than a firm necessity to acquire a handle for reference that urged us to choose a leader.
May 16th. We have turned towards the north somewhat, with the evening sunlight a great spectacle behind a handsome ridge. We are now one hundred miles from Westport. One of our oxen stepped onto a thorn and his foot is paining him. Mr Franklin made a poultice for it, and the hope is that it will be easier on the morrow. Father thinks we might have a loan of a replacement from the Wilson party, but the poor creature will have to walk on his bad foot, in any case.
Word has been passed that we are a few miles from the Solomon River, where we might fill our water barrels and perform all the other functions for which water is necessary. Father bemoaned our position near the rear of the train, since the water would be muddied and meagre by the time it came to our turn to use it. Lizzie’s ankle has swelled, so she rides in the wagon, but strictly just for the single day.
There was some annoyance that day, from a variety of causes. The ox made much of his injured foot and Lizzie seemed to suffer in sympathy with him. Her ankle did indeed swell alarmingly through the first hour of the day, and she was finally allowed to perch at the front of the wagon, where she kept up a complaint, alternately calling for mercy for the beast, and yelping at every jolt. The tracks were deeply rutted, but the ground was quite soft from the spring rains and there was not a stone to be seen, after so many hundreds of wagons had passed over the same ground. This meant that the jolts were rather minor, and Lizzie was more anxious to remind us of her presence than to make us believe she was in any real pain.
She achieved her purpose handsomely. The whole of that day was consumed by irritation with my sister, and the first faint inklings that this was to be our way of life for many more months. Our water was stale to the tongue, with an odd lifelessness to it. My boots had been a little too large when I acquired them, so I had been careful to wear my thickest hose to pad them out. This was now uncomfortably warm on my legs, chafing and itching. My hair was thick and hot under my bonnet. Fanny had been bitten by a bug on the side of her neck, and she scratched it incessantly, only to scream with shock when she made it bleed. My mother walked unevenly, using more energy than necessary, pulling at her left leg for no reason she would ever disclose. It was, I believe, nothing more than an unfortunate gait, developed from childhood and never to be altered. She resembled a woman stumbling over a ploughed field, the left leg behaving as if an invisible ridge obstructed it at every step. Watching her merely increased my irritation.
Even little Nam’s spirits were subdued. She eyed Lizzie with envy, letting herself fall behind the party, to demonstrate how weary and small she was, and how deserving of a place on the wagon next to her sister. My mother called to her, going back and grabbing her hand when Nam failed to catch us up. All the younger children had received a plain talking-to at the outset, in which the requirement that they walk ten or twelve miles each day was not open to any discussion. Those above the age of three would have to use their legs like anybody else. We had seen a few being carried on their fathers’ shoulders now and then, in the first days, but this has quickly been abandoned, as realisation dawned that it was not a good habit to establish.