Fremont's 1848-49 Journey III

The previous two essays surveyed the issues motivating Fremont's fourth exploratory trip--into the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountains in Southern Colorado-- as well as the deadly obstacles faced by the explorers. I wrote those two essays on the basis of biographical treatments of Fremont, especially Allen Nevins and Tom Chaffin, supplemented by other reading here and there. But then, just a few days ago, I got a copy of Patricia Richmond's Trail to Disaster, a close reconstruction of and trail guide to the fourth expedition. Just as Debby Applegate has been fascinated by Henry Ward Beecher and his life for 20 years (winning the Pulitzer Prize for biography in April 2007 for her book on him--reviewed here), so Richmond "lived" with Fremon'ts fourth expedition for 20 years since her days as a graduate student at nearby Adams St. University (Alamosa, CO) until the publication of the work in 1990. Her work shows us not only what it is doggedly to pursue a historical subject, i.e., the route of Fremont and the rescue party(s) in Dec. 1848-Jan. 1849, but also exposes the weakness in all conventional biographies, which just have to "gloss over" the realia of the trip's details because they are telling the story of a life and not of one journey.

Let me pause on this second point for a moment. The purpose of all my study and writing is to get to what I call the "actual lived realia" of life. Through study, investigation, sympathetic reconstruction, and probing writing I hope to bring human existence alive in all its painful and joyful richness. In order to do this, one needs a most minute understanding and appreciation of detail as well as an ability to draw the "big picture." Just as a Rembrandt painting had to represent each individual eyelash or face line in order for the "soul" of the person to shine through the painting, so I believe that historical narrative that brings the subject to life has to be immersed in sources and lives of the people it describes. But the more you immerse yourself in something, the more it opens to you. This is a great lesson of life--it opens to you when you show the respect, time, patience and skill to investigate it with care. Insight and wisdom is the reward for relentless effort.

Though Richmond didn't try in her book to give us a "full psychological narrative" of the journey, she does give us the most minute reconstruction of it, a reconstruction that helps explain the tremendous gaps in narration of both Nevins and Chaffin. This essay will point one point where Richmond's narrative helps me "bring alive" the expedition and, frankly, forces me to ask more and more questions about it. The next essay will consider other points and will conclude my treatment of Fremon'ts fourth trip. Her effort is testimony to the value of taking a subject that fascinates, even obsesses, and not letting it go until, in the words it Jacob of old, "it blesses me" (Gen. 32:26).

Issue # 1--Taking the Mosca Pass

Early in the trip, after departing from Pueblo on November 22 and then the Hardscrabble settlement, further up the Arkansas River, on November 25, the Fremont party (different accounts list from between 32 and 36 men; one or two left the group at various points, too..) had to decide how to get through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. They decided on the Mosca Pass, then called the Robidoux Pass. But all accounts agree that they didn't get through the pass until December 3. This is eight days to go about 40 miles. The "biographers" gloss over this time, as if it was ho-hum no problem time, but Richmond subjects it to a little closer scrutiny. It is the closer scrutiny that brings out some of the dynamics of the trip that were already unfolding.

"Williams (old Bill Williams, the guide hired in Pueblo) led the expedition past cliffs, over hills, and through valleys. Camps were made in deep snow. There was no water, a situation that would debilitate the mules faster than the lack of food...On November 29, with the Wet Mountains to the north of them, Fremont and his men, exhausted by the up-and-down march through snow, approached the valley of the Huerfano River..." (pp. 6-7).

She tells us that the men replaced their deteriorating boots with moccasins, something learned from the Zebulon Pike trek of 1807, where the men suffered severe frostbite by staying in useless boots. Finally, they reached the pass on the 3rd. But then, after going through it and moving north, to skirt the great sand dunes, they came across another pass, the Medano Pass. Fremont was apparently unaware of it, but after investigating it with a few of his men, they concluded that it would have been a far better pass to take than the Mosca/Robidoux. As Richmond says:

"Preuss (one of the party members, who kept a diary) wondered about the long, difficult, provision-exhausting detour and considered it odd that Williams had avoided using this "real pass. (i.e., the Medano Pass) ....Had the expedition followed the North Hardscrabble Creek to its source and then crossed into the Wet Mountain Valley, the men would have reached Medano Pass approximately two days after leaving Hardscrabble. The route over Mosca Pass had taken over a week, had depleted the supplies, and had seriously taxed the energies of men and animals" (pp. 8-9).

Let's evaluate where we are in our historical understanding. When we read the Fremont biographers we are left with the notion that the trip from Hardscrabble to Mosca (8 days) was sort of a breeze. Or, alternatively, we are not told anything about it. But if we take our time and go with the "guys" day by day, we see that all the issues of the trip are here in nuce. We have wasted effort, exhausted people, a guide who really isn't quite "with it," people who don't know exactly what to do with the guide, mules that are on the edge of death, and then, a fateful decision to "press on." The expedition avoided or failed to address so many "warning signals" both at Pueblo and then getting to the Mosca Pass, that they simply ought to have turned around.

I said in an earlier essay that the point of the trip was to go during the rugged early Winter months so that one could assess whether a railroad train could "make it" in the Winter. But this explanation might need to be slightly supplemented. They didn't leave Westport, MO (on the KS border) until October 21. They had originally left St. Louis on October 3, and you would think that they had "wasted" two weeks or so in Westport. But the reason for the late leaving from Westport wasn't necessarily to make sure the weather would be bad (i.e., which it would be in January), but because Fremont's little boy died en route from St Louis to Westport. His wife, Jesse, refused to surrender the body (the boy died on the boat) for burial while she and Fremont were on a boat taking them to the launching point of the trip (she wanted to be with her traveling husband until the last moment). I got the impression from 're-reading' the early narrative of the trip that Fremont's journey was delayed two weeks, perhaps, to deal with issues relating to the death of his son. Another sign that things were possibly going awry.

Conclusion

As usual, I need another essay to probe deeper into later parts of the trip. I hope you see the value of the "day by day" historical work now.

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