Jebediah Sure Would Taste Better With Some Good Honey Mustard

Two orders of business today, before I get started. First, I direct you to Sacred Ground, where I did a blog with Lyn about Quebec City. Check it out, and comment, let us know what you think. That's assuming the current issues with Blogger comments sorts itself out fast.  

Second, in recent days, this blog passed one hundred thousand views. This still astonishes me. You see, for the longest time when I was growing up, I was so used to being the odd one out. Knowing that for some reason this blog seems to get a lot of traffic both pleases me and confuses me to no end.

Now, to the mayhem at hand, and it occurs to me that this blog might have done well to be written for Sacred Ground, given the subject matter. A word of warning: if your ancestors took part in certain taboo activities implied by the blog title, either as a diner or as a meal, you might want to avoid this one...

Donner Lake, California

I have a long fascination with the history of the American West. Contrary to the simplicity of most television and film Westerns, the real story of the West is an infinitely complex web of stories where things are not black and white, where you find moments that can make you proud, alongside other moments that horrify you or make you feel great shame. The history of the West is one of people, and of place. It’s a story that crosses geo-political boundaries; the story of the Canadian West has some unusual parallels and differences to the American experience.

In 1846, the U.S.- Mexican War began, drawing American forces down into the Southwest and directly into Mexican territory. When it was done two years later, Mexico had lost much of its territory, which would one day become states in the Union of their own right, and an army of exceptional young officers had tasted combat and learned lessons that would come back on their own home ground thirteen years later as they turned to war against each other. Mexico would never really recover from the war.

Early on in the war, California itself was taken by American forces, and by the end of the first year was secured. A wave of pioneers began moving west towards California, following trails already being used by Americans to travel to a place that was not yet their own even before the war. In May of 1846, one such wagon train of pioneers, consisting of over eighty people, started out from Missouri for the proverbial promised land. That group came to be known as the Donner Party.

Donner Pass, California

The journey across the continent in those days was one that would routinely take months. One wrong decision, or a delay, could be deadly. Wagon trains routinely fell apart at the time because of disagreements. There was always the potential threat of hostile natives. More to the point, the land itself and the bad judgment of the people in a wagon train could be unforgiving. Such was the case with the Donner Party, and it led to them occupying a rather... infamous place in American history.

The wagon train took a route through Utah and Nevada, thought to be a faster route. They intended to be in the warmth of California by September. Instead, the route had never been tested; the man who actually promoted it had never done the route with wagons. It passed through the unforgiving Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert. The route slowed the train considerably, and required far more work than other routes would have. Animals were weakened by the strain. An elderly man disappeared, and was never seen again. Tensions built among the members of the train, which finally reached the Sierra Nevada by October, quickly becoming snowbound in the high Sierra in the area around Truckee Lake.

The tensions in the group had caused serious rifts; James Reed, a member of the group, had been driven out after a fight ended in the death of another man and forced to ride ahead alone into California. In retrospect, he was unbelievably lucky. Tempers had been badly frayed during the journey, and the group had splintered into small groups, each distrustful of the other. The nominal leader of the group, George Donner, had enough difficulties trying to keep things together.

The Sierra Nevada is a hard place, even today. To get caught out in it during the winter, unprepared and without enough supply, can be a death sentence. The range includes many peaks over twelve thousand feet, and is an entirely unforgiving place. The Donner Party managed to take shelter in rudimentary cabins around the area, built by people who had passed through the Truckee Lake area some years before. Attempts to go further west- or to come east from the handful of party members who safely made it into California early- met with failure as the snows set in. The Party set into their encampments for the winter, just hoping to survive.

Encampments, Truckee Lake 1846-1847

Food stores quickly began to run low. More animals died of starvation and cold. Teams sent to try to find help were swallowed up by the mountains, dying of exposure and cold. Of one such team, it is known that cannibalism of the dead took place. Among the main camps, people began to die of starvation. Madness set in among some of the families. Cannibalism set in among some of the survivors, feeding off the dead. Exactly how much is unknown; during the winter, three relief parties managed to breach the area and find survivors, as well as mutilated remains. Survivors tended to refrain from admitting that they ate of the dead, primarily out of shame. Regardless, what happened that winter would serve as a reminder of the unforgiving power of nature, and of how badly society itself can splinter under pressure.

Of the eighty seven people who ended up encamping in the area over the winter, forty eight survived. Only two families remained intact.  For years afterwards, remains and bones were being discovered by passing parties, and buried. Personal items were destroyed. The ordeal left profound wounds among the survivors, deep animosities that would last a lifetime. The stories were embellished, to the point where it’s hard to tell where the truth lies and where the exaggeration or the cover-up begins.

Today the areas where the tragedy took place are preserved as a state park. Truckee Lake has been renamed Donner Lake. The Donner Memorial sees thousands of visitors in a year. The last member of the party died in 1935. And the Sierra Nevada remains an unforgiving place. The story of the Donner Party is relatively minor in the greater story of the West, but the tragic aspect of it still draws us back to it. It isn’t a story of heroism or villainy. It’s one of the brutal, harsh reality of the West, a hard lesson that the land can turn on you, that one bad decision can destroy you. Too many failed to heed that lesson in the years that followed, and even today, the lesson still applies.

Donner Memorial

Oh, and Jebediah probably didn’t taste all that good, even if they’d had honey mustard. Just saying.

Lewis And Clark: How The Corps Of Discovery Reached The Pacific A Decade Late

Clark and Lewis

Between 1804 and 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led what was known as the Corps of Discovery, a group of soldiers, frontiersmen, and guides, from the mouth of the Missouri River at St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific Ocean. It was an epic journey into unknown territories, the first Americans to cross the continental divide, and one of the great stories of all time.

Mind you, Alexander Mackenzie had made the trip a few years earlier, crossing Canada to the Arctic and the Pacific. Try explaining that to our American cousins.

During the expedition, Lewis and Clark ascended the mighty Missouri, made first contact with Native tribes (for the most part, in a friendly way), mapped large sections of the West, made a difficult crossing over the mountains, and put an end to the myth of the Northwest Passage. All the while travelling through some of the most picturesque sceneries on the continent. And in all that time, they lost only one member of the expedition to a sickness that no one at the time could have done anything about.

White Cliffs of the Missouri

Oh, and there's the oft-ignored member of the expedition who never actually got started on the expedition, so he doesn't count in the annals of history. Jebediah "Blabbermouth" McLaughlin, the legendary Blowhard of the Shenandoah, only made it to St. Louis. By which time the other expedition members were so sick and tired of him that they got him drunk and left him in front of a local insane asylum. There McLaughlin was taken into custody, living out the rest of his days claiming he was the most brilliant human being in history.

It's an extraordinary tale of American history, this Corps of Discovery. I've read the story many times. I've passed by certain areas where the explorers travelled two centuries ago. There'll come a day when I retrace the full journey myself, as many have before me. It's a story of friendship, courage, and teamwork. And setting up a loudmouth for a lifetime of insane asylum residency.

Rumors have dogged the expedition for two centuries. French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, who came along with his wife Sacagawea, was dismissed as a "man of no particular merit" by Lewis. His chronic complaining annoyed the rest of the expedition; indeed, two years after the return, Clark wrote his brother with details. "Charbonneau kept asking are we there yet? How much ferther is it? It was most vexxing. We considerred having him meet with an accident, but the opportunity never showed itself." The spelling is his original, by the way. Clark was an entertaining writer and genius at mapmaking, but a horrible speller.

A page of Clark's journal

Another rumor is less well known, but may have more substance. Some have said that the reason for Lewis' depression and ultimate suicide was his inadvertantly forgetting his housekeys at Fort Clatsop in March of 1806.

The names of the explorers have been put all over the map, from trails to lakes to towns to parks. It's even been used in some more... creative ways.

Today, in St. Louis, where it all began, stands a statue of the explorers, on the banks of the Mississippi.

Unfortunately the river has this annoying tendency to overflow its banks, which it's doing yet again this year. So the statue commemorating these extraordinary leaders winds up getting submerged.

Don't believe me?

What did I tell you?

Common sense would dictate that the statue be moved uphill. Perhaps in the vicinity of the Arch. Common sense, however, does not prevail in City Hall, however (a common affliction in city halls).

And so the statues are doomed to spend at least some time submerged in water every few years. What would Lewis and Clark have to say about this blight on their reputation?

"Well, Lewis, looks like we're drowning again."

"See you in June, Clark."