Meeks cutoff II

http://www.oregonhistorictrailsfund.org/trails/showtrail.php?id=7

BIO repeated
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Historical context






Tuck what is called Meek's Cutoff...a bad cutoff for all that tuck it. ...I will just say, pen and tong will both fall short when they gow to tell of the suffering the company went through





Samuel Parker, 1845

Stephen Hall Meek was born in Virginia in 1807 to James and Spicy Meek. While in his late teens, Meek's mother died and his father remarried quickly. Meek's new mother, a widow with children of her own, was happy to care for the Widower Meek's family, and in so doing, imposed a new rigor into daily life. High time, the teenage Stephen Meek thought, to branch into a new life and head west. By 1828, Meek joined the fur trade and, with William Sublette, ventured into the Rocky Mountains.



Over the next seventeen years, Meek followed wildlife trails, Indian trading trails, and Hudson's Bay Company trails over much of the west. He joined the great trappers rendezvous and wintered with the Flatheads and "Napercies." He traveled many of the West's significant rivers: the Platte, Salmon, Snake, American, Greybull, Yellowstone, Humboldt, the John Day, Malheur, Owyhee, Columbia, Klamath, and Shasta. He traveled in the company of the great mountain men and explorers of the American West including Jim Bridger, Captain Benjamin Bonneville, and the Hudson's Bay Company's Tom McKay.



In 1842, the fur trade was in its closing years, and Meek found himself in Independence, Missouri. Alone, and with no particular direction to follow, Meek joined an emigrant wagon train bound for the Oregon Country. Under his guidance, the few emigrants who crossed overland that year arrived at Willamette Falls early in October.



At Oregon City, Meek and several of his associates were employed by Dr. John McLoughlin surveying and selling lots along the Willamette and Clackamas rivers. Never one to settle for long, Meek was traveling again the following spring. Subsidized by McLoughlin and the Hudson's Bay Company, Meek and his friend, Loren W. Hastings, lead a party of fifty-three men, women, and children from the Willamette River to Sutter's Fort on the American River in California. Although a number of those who were California-bound turned back midway, Meek saw the remaining travelers to Sutter's Fort and then continued alone to Monterey. After a brief stay in Monterey, Meek continued north to Bodega Bay. There he boarded a ship with intentions to travel the world, but only got as far as New York, via Panama, before a change of heart took him home to Virginia.



By May, 1845, Meek was back in Independence, Missouri, where an unprecedented group of Americans was gathering together to travel to the Oregon Country. Stephen Meek's experience (and perhaps his low bid for services) inspired his companions to select him as guide for the train of nearly 500 wagons.










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The group broke into companies. Within those companies were parties, small groups of families helping each other through the trip. Among those following Meek were diarists James Field, Jesse Harritt, John Herren, John Howell, Samuel Parker, and Solomon Tetherow.






Here we left the former route, bearing a little south of west; we steered our course over a tolerable good road thirteen miles and encamped on the same stream, found grass and fine willows.





Jesse Harritt, August 25, 1845





Meek led the wagon train along the rocky banks of the Malheur River, then up and over rocky and rough bluffs. The wagons at this point were proving very maneuverable (inspiring James Field to wonder if they could be driven anywhere). The oxen and emigrants had a very difficult time with the route, however, and some of the parties moved more quickly than did others. The miles stretched between small groups following Meek's route; in some cases the companies followed just a day behind the lead, others followed several days behind.



Meek led the straggling train through Harper Valley and the Malheur Mountains, then on to the north fork of the Malheur River near Beulah Reservoir. From Castle Rock, a prominent feature of the area's landscape north of the reservoir, the group moved west only as fast as the oxen could go. The rocky ground cut and bruised the animals' feet. Historian Donna Wojick noted that, "Stones frequently broken by a forward company, iron-stained by wagon wheels and bloodstained by cattle's feet, left a vivid trail for companies behind to follow."



Just south of Castle Rock, Sarah Chambers (an emigrant in the party) succumbed to "camp fever." Her husband Rowland and the rest of the party marked her passing on a large stone, inscribed "Mrs. S. Chambers Sept. 3rd 1845" Hers was the first death among those following Meek; Many others succumbed in the weeks that followed.



Travel became ever more difficult as the emigrants worked through the area near Drewsey, over Stinkingwater Mountain, and on toward the Harney Valley. Grasses grew drier and water became more scarce. The emigrants had been following Meek for ten days and were growing suspicious of his claims about the route.



The route Meek described and the route followed to date were vastly different. There was speculation around the evening campfires that Meek had lied, had been paid by the HBC or by the Indians to lose the Americans. Some decided he should be hanged (and went so far as to arrange their wagons to make a gallows from a tripod of wagon tongues). Others argued that Meek was their only hope for escape; he was the only man among them who had been in this region of the country before.



Matters worsened (as described by Wojick) when Meek and the wagon train crested the rim of Harney Valley and the broad lake (Malheur) he expected to see was gone -- a large, marshy and stagnant pool stood in its place. The water was unsuitable for both the animals and the people so dependent on them. September's first week was ending and the groups were concerned that their situation would worsen. Rumor and frustration mounted within the camps and the group painfully realized that they were indeed "lost."





It was his [Meek's] intention to follow down Crooked river to the Deschutes and down it to the old road, but when he came to the marshy lake spoken of last Sunday, the company refused to follow him if he made the circuit necessary to get around it upon Crooked River again so he struck off in a westerly direction in order to get upon the main Deschutes river. He well knew that there was a scarcity of grass and water across here and so informed them, but it was near and they would have him go it, and now blame him for coming the route they obliged him to.





James Field, September 11, 1845





The emigrants did find small diversions from their angst at Malheur Lake. Along the dried lake banks were large deposits of alkali which could be used as baking powder. Emigrants eagerly collected the crystals for making bread.



While camped in the valley, the wagon train also met Paiutes living on the shores of the Malheur lake. Although the emigrants often saw Indians in small groups at a distance, this was the emigrants' first direct encounter with a tribal group since leaving the main stem of the Oregon Trail.



The companies found that the valley was a haven for game birds. Even so, the water was too brackish for human or animal consumption and the companies wandered miles out of the way searching for fresh spring water. The lead parties of the wagon train camped on the north edge of Harney Lake.



After another day's travel to Silver Lake, the emigrants again held a camp meeting. Meek thought it would be best to stay on the Hudson's Bay Company trapper's trail and cross through the central Cascades into the Willamette Valley.



However, having lost all faith in Meek's abilities and suspicious of his motives, the emigrants argued that it would be better to abandon the trappers' trail and head straight for the Deschutes, cross it and work toward the Cascades; then, if they couldn't find a pass through the mountains, they could still travel up the Deschutes to The Dalles -- and safety. Meek's authority and protestations about the lack of water in the region were perhaps dulled by recent events. The emigrants dismissed his opinions and set out on a slow, dry pull to Wagontire Mountain.



En route, a toddler succumbed to whooping cough, and on September 8, the wagon train marked its second death and buried 21-month-old Elkanah Packwood. Concerned about humans (or animals) stealing from the boy's grave, the emigrants took care the following morning to roll their wagon wheels over the small burial mound, smoothing the ground so that there would be no hint of the child's body within. Illness increased throughout the wagon train.



It took the entire group three days to travel the 25 miles from Silver Lake to Wagontire Mountain. They set up camp just after midnight.





We camped at a spring which we gave the name of "The Lost Hollow" because there was very little water there. We had men out in every direction in search of water. They traveled 40 or 50 miles in search of water but found none. You cannot imagine how we all felt. Go back, we could not and we knew not what was before us. Our provisions were failing us. There was sorrow and dismay depicted on every countenance. We were like mariners lost at sea and in the mountainous wilderness we had to remain for vie days.





as remembered by Betsy Bayley in 1849